Coinmama Review 2025

Our Verdict

• 🔄 Coinmama is a simple platform for buying and selling cryptocurrency directly to and from third-party wallets.
• 🌍 Supports 82 cryptocurrencies, 44 fiat currencies for trading, and over 500 tokens for crypto swaps.
• 🔐 KYC is required for buying and selling crypto but not for crypto swaps, catering to users who prioritize speed and anonymity.
• 🔒 As a non-custodial platform, Coinmama does not store users’ crypto or fiat, enhancing its security.
• 💸 This convenience comes with exceptionally high fees, often surpassing the advertised 3.9% maximum and being up to five times costlier than other platforms.
• 👤 Coinmama suits those who need a simple way to buy crypto for personal use and are indifferent to spending high fees or using advanced trading features.

Coinmama Pros and Cons

Supported Countries and Regions

Coinmama operates as a non-KYC exchange for crypto swaps, allowing access from nearly anywhere in the world through third-party payments. However, the platform restricts users from several regions, including New York and Louisiana in the US, and international territories such as Abkhazia, Afghanistan, Belarus, Central African Republic, Crimea, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Myanmar, Nicaragua, North Korea, Northern Cyprus, Palestine, Russia, Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, Somalia, South Ossetia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, the Luhansk and Donetsk regions of Ukraine, and Zimbabwe.

Coinmama Bonuses and Special Offers

Referrals: Join the exchange using our affiliate link and earn 15% commissions on purchases.

Loyalty program: Coinmama’s Loyalty Program rewards users based on their cumulative purchases. By reaching higher tiers, users can save up to 25% on fees.

Coinmama Background

Coinmama, founded in 2013, is a Canada-based cryptocurrency exchange and the consumer-focused arm of Wellfield Technologies, which acquired the company on May 27, 2022. Founded by Nimrod Gruber (COO, based in Israel), and Laurence Newman (co-founder and business coach in London), Coinmama now serves over three million customers.

With offices in Israel and Canada, Coinmama focuses on simplifying cryptocurrency purchases for beginners. After a 2019 data breach, it strengthened security and continues to serve a global user base with an emphasis on safety and ease of use.

Security and Transparency

Cyber Security Measures: Coinmama features 2FA, which is enabled by default and sends a one-time code via email. Coinmama is not entirely decentralized and still collects data like your activity, personal and KYC info, messages, and device details (such as IP address and location).

General Reliability: In my testing, Coinmama seems to be a straightforward and mostly reliable option for buying cryptocurrencies. However, it did face a data breach in 2019. My payments were sometimes declined randomly during testing but often worked on the second attempt. It lacks a bug bounty program and has limited customer support.

Corporate Communication Structure and Transparency: Coinmama shares information on its founders from its official website. The company is most active on Facebook with daily posts, which I found strange as it’s not typically a crypto-focused platform. It’s very active on LinkedIn, posting around three times per week, and less active on Instagram and Twitter (X).

Know-Your-Customer Procedure: Based on my experience testing Coinmama from the UK, its KYC process is on par with other exchanges regarding user-friendliness. While the crypto-swaps tool does not require KYC or account creation, logging in and completing KYC is mandatory for buying and selling cryptocurrency.

However, it has an interesting twist: you make your first crypto payment before completing KYC. During testing, I found that if you skip the KYC after paying, Coinmama will refund your money.

The KYC process itself is pretty standard. It asks for details like your address and ID proof (passport or driver’s license) and lets you switch to your phone for a photo if needed. It also includes a preference check that takes several face photos. Similar to most UK-compliant exchanges, Coinmama asks questions to confirm your understanding of crypto risks before allowing you to complete the transaction.

Is Coinmama Safe to Trade With?

Based on our findings, Coinmama has a high level of security, but its trust is more questionable. When using the exchange, remember the following factors:

• Although it experienced a security breach that was reported in 2019, no funds were lost.
• Financial authorities like the FCA regulate Coinmama.
• Its non-custodial model adds a layer of security, making traditional protections like deposit insurance unnecessary.
• It does not save your bank details for transactions.

Trading Experience

This review was conducted in the United Kingdom using the Google Chrome browser.

Trading Test

For our trading test, we thoroughly evaluated Coinmama. Our process included signing up, completing the KYC verification, logging in, and testing the platform. This comprehensive test allows us to provide an informed and reliable review of the exchange’s usability, features, and actual costs. Here’s our detailed analysis:

Step 1: Setting Up Your Account And Passing KYC

Signing up with Coinmama is straightforward: enter your email, create a password, and verify via a 2FA email code. After logging in, UK users must wait 24 hours before making a purchase, in line with the FCA’s “cool-off” period for crypto transactions.

The KYC process begins during the final steps of your first crypto purchase or sale. KYC was immediate after I submitted a clear photo of my government-issued ID, a separate selfie, and completed a brief FCA questionnaire.

Step 2: Buying Crypto and Transferring to Your Wallet

I chose to buy £100 of ETH directly to my ledger wallet.

My transaction was handled through Paybis, a third-party service integrated with Coinmama, and completed within a minute. The funds reached my Ledger account in just three minutes. The total fees amounted to 0.00519669 ETH (£12.68), which included both a network fee and Coinmama’s service fee.

Of this, Coinmama’s fee came to £11.37 or 11.39%, making it the most expensive exchange I’ve reviewed for buying crypto.

Step 3: Selling Crypto and Review

To complete my tests, I decided to sell some of the crypto I had just purchased. Selling via Coinmama proved to be a highly manual process, requiring users to send the crypto directly to Coinmama. The platform provided an address to copy and a QR code for mobile convenience to facilitate the transaction.

The minimum amount I could sell was £23.69 worth of ETH, but I actually had to send £31.02, which is significantly higher than the minimum sell requirements on most other exchanges. Additionally, only credit/debit cards and SWIFT payments were available for selling crypto, limiting the payment options.

I sent the deposit amount of 0.001267984 ETH to the address Coinmama provided.

Following this, the process was faster than I expected. After 5 minutes, the page updated, letting me know the transaction was complete. I checked my bank balance, and the cash was in my account.

Coinmama’s £5.69 fee for a small sale of just £23.69 felt excessively high for such a small amount, a 24.06% fee! I appreciate the concept behind Coinmama, but its high fees make it an exchange I wouldn’t personally use.

Desktop Version

Coinmama is a desktop-only platform offering a simple and intuitive interface that caters to crypto novices. It provides a straightforward way to buy and sell cryptocurrency using fiat, avoiding the complexities of spot, futures, or leveraged trading. During testing, I found the process efficient and the interface clear.

Buying

Coinmama’s payment system closely resembles Paybis, likely due to outsourcing some of its payment processing to them. It supports four fiat payment methods (Revolut, PayPal, SWIFT, and debit/credit cards), accommodating nearly 50 fiat currencies for making purchases, more extensive than centralized exchanges like HTX or KuCoin.

Selling

Unlike other exchanges, cashing out requires manually sending crypto to an address provided by Coinmama, and then receiving funds into your bank account.

Search Functionality

Coinmama’s crypto search feature is quite basic, consisting only of a simple search bar. Unlike platforms such as YouHodler or Gemini, which provide categorized listings of popular or different types of cryptocurrencies, Coinmama lacks this functionality. This is unfortunate, as discovery tools are valuable for crypto beginners to explore and identify the coins that best suit their needs.

Interface and Additional Features

I came across two additional tools: a Bitcoin calculator and a crypto swaps tool.

I tested the Bitcoin calculator and found its dropdown for other tokens non-functional. It only displayed Bitcoin’s current price and offered a button to buy crypto, which redirected to Coinmama’s main buy screen. This limited functionality was disappointing.

The crypto swaps tool supports 500 tokens — well beyond the 82 tokens available on the main exchange. It operates without requiring an account or KYC and is accessible regardless of geographical restrictions, so it was odd it was not accessible through the main navigation while logged in.

My Key Takeaways After Testing Coinmama

Coinmama is a functional platform for buying and selling cryptocurrency. However, it lacks features like a comprehensive crypto discovery tool, and some information is inaccessible from the main navigation.

In my opinion, Coinmama feels outdated and in need of modernization.

Fees

Coinmama is not a trading platform, so a comparison of its Maker/Taker model, as we typically conduct in our tests, is not applicable. However, the platform does apply various fees for buying or selling cryptocurrency.

Coinmama Deposit Fees

As Coinmama’s fee structure is unclear, I wanted to test the fees for each of the above payment methods with $1000. In my testing, I found Coinmama charged slightly more for buying crypto than selling it on all payment methods except SWIFT.

I was puzzled by the exceptionally high fees, far above the 3.9% commission advertised on their website.

Coinmama Withdrawal Fees

Its official website claims that it has a 0.9% withdrawal fee for Bitcoin. However, my testing also showed this to be false: the fee for a $1000 Litecoin withdrawal was 9.83% via Debit/Credit card and 14.31% through Swift.

Are Coinmama’s Fees Competitive?

Coinmama’s fees are far from competitive, as our testing revealed significant discrepancies between its advertised rates and actual charges. The lack of clarity in its fee structure contributes to its reputation as one of the most expensive and least user-friendly exchanges.

Cryptocurrencies Available on Coinmama

Deposits & Withdrawals

Coinmama Deposit Options

Coinmama offers an impressive range of deposit options in 44 fiat currencies that vary based on the region served. This stands out even among major platforms like Coinbase, which typically offer only two or three deposit methods per location.

Coinmama Withdrawal Methods

The options for cashing out on Coinmama are decent but limited compared to its deposit options. Withdrawals can only be made in GBP, USD, and EUR.

Customer Support

Coinmama supports a blog tutorial section. However, its recent articles serve as educational content on the wider crypto industry instead of tutorials on the platform itself.

Coinmama has an educational resource called Coinmama Academy, a database of blog articles set up to help newcomers understand crypto. Its content focuses on the basics of crypto, which I think is awesome to see a smaller exchange like Coinmama put effort into.

The platform also provides an FAQ section, but it is limited. As mentioned previously, it displays inaccurate information on fees, leading me to believe some of the content is outdated.

FAQ