Werner van Rooyen 
11 JAN 2017 • 3 minute read

At Luno, we focus on helping customers get Bitcoin in the easiest and fastest ways.

Bank transfers are by far the most common funding method supported by Bitcoin providers, including us. Customers make a deposit in their local currency, and then once the funds reflect, they use it to purchase Bitcoin.

This, however, is often a hurdle for new customers to buy Bitcoin: it just takes too much time.

The other hurdle is that we can only accept bank deposits from customers with bank accounts in our supported countries. This excludes many people from getting access to Bitcoin and our products.

We are excited with the slow rolling out of a new feature, still in beta testing mode: buying Bitcoin with a credit card.

We have partnered with Simplex to provide this feature. Simplex’ expertise lie in reducing credit card fraud - a key issue that prevents most Bitcoin trading platforms from accepting payments that way. They have extremely sophisticated tracking and monitoring systems and use tons of data points to identify potential fraud. This was very important to us.

All a customer needs to do is enter their credit card details and the amount of Bitcoin they wish to purchase in USD and in a few minutes, the transaction will be processed.

Please note:

Buying Bitcoin with a credit card on Luno is currently only available in India and most of Europe (Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Cyprus, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Spain, Finland, France, United Kingdom, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Slovenia, Slovakia, Ukraine), but will come to more countries around the world soon.
Note that Simplex recently announced that they won't be able to support customers from Canada anymore.
Note that we have seen some credit cards being rejected while going through the process. This is usually due to your bank not approving the payment. In such cases, we would urge you to try another credit card if possible and make sure it is a reputed international credit card.
Customers who purchased Bitcoin with their credit card can safely store, spend or send it elsewhere. Currently, we/Simplex can't support the selling of Bitcoin that was bought with a credit card. We are working on solutions to get customers to sell their card-purchased Bitcoin using Luno. We'll send updates on this as the product evolves.
For step-by-step guidance on buying Bitcoin with your credit card, see our Help Centre article.
SUPPORTED COUNTRIES
Buying Bitcoin with a credit card on Luno is currently only available in Andorra, Argentina, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Bahrain, Brunei Darussalam, Brazil, Bahama, Switzerland, Chile, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Spain, Finland, France, Gibraltar, Greenland, Guadeloupe, Greece, Hong Kong, Croatia, Hungary, Ireland, Isle of Man, India, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Kuwait, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Latvia, Luxembourg, Republic of Moldova, Montenegro, Martinique, Malta, New Caledonia, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Peru, French Polynesia, Poland, Puerto Rico, Portugal, Qatar, Reunion, Romania, Serbia, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Slovenia, Slovakia, San Marino, Sint Maarten, Turkey, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom.

For Luno, this is a big step towards reaching our end goal: making Bitcoin easily accessible to everyone, everywhere.

You can expect to hear more updates and features like this in the near future.

Global
Avatar Werner van Rooyen
AUTHOR
Werner van Rooyen

Werner heads up Business Development and Growth at Luno. His passions include payments, e-commerce, technology, marketing and design: something that he has been fortunate enough to do on three different continents. Werner has lived and worked in South Africa, the United States, Indonesia, Taiwan and China.