As in any market, cryptocurrency price fluctuations often happen from minute to minute. At Coinmama, we believe the price you see should be the price you get. Therefore we lock the cryptocurrency rate on some of our payment methods.
Buying cryptocurrency
- Debit and credit card orders: We lock the rate for 30 minutes from the moment you hit "buy." That means that even if the price swings wildly while you're entering your payment details, we'll honor the rate you saw, as long as your order is completed and your payment is approved within 30 minutes. (If you've ever tried to buy a plane ticket only to have the price jump after you enter your card details, you understand where we're coming from.) After 30 minutes, your order will automatically expire and your coins will be removed from your cart.
- Bank transfers: Bank transfers require an offline process that can take anywhere from 24 hours to several days, so we cannot lock the rate while the payment is being processed. If you're paying by bank transfer, we'll lock the rate as soon as payment is received.
Selling cryptocurrency
We'll lock the fiat to crypto rate for 30 minutes from the moment you hit "sell." That means the fiat price we quoted you will still be good, even if the coins plummet during that time. The coins you're selling will need to appear on the blockchain within 30 minutes, so make sure you transfer them from your wallet.
Cryptocurrency is decentralized, so there's no one entity determining its price, and different exchanges often offer vastly different rates. Because there's no market rate, price indexes, which show price averages from the major exchanges, help keep consumers in the know. You can read more here on how Coinmama derives its rates.