Luno is a crypto company operating across a number of geographies. Next to its presence in Europe, it operates in several African and Asian countries. Like Coinbase, it offers both a wallet (where beginners can buy crypto instantly) as well as an exchange.

Since using the exchange is always cheaper, and because we covered the Luno wallet in our wallet section, in this guide we will walk you through the procedure of buying crypto through the Luno exchange.

How to Sign-Up for Luno

To sign-up for Luno, head to their website and click on “Sign-up”. You’ll be asked to enter your country of residence, email address and your chosen password. After verifying your email address (make sure to check your spam folder) you will be prompted to submit your mobile phone number. Make sure to enter the right number, as you will receive an sms code which you need to enter in order to complete the sign-up. Moreover, Luno will sometimes use that phone number to authenticate you when they see suspicious activity related to your account.

Once you have signed-up, you will need to get your identity verified in order to be eligible to trade. The documents required for that procedure vary slightly from country to country as outlined in thissupport documentation page page. For European users, it consists of uploading a photo of a government issued ID (e.g passport, driving license etc.) a proof-of-residence (e.g utility bill, bank statement etc.) and a selfie. Luno processes these documents in an automated way so once you have uploaded all the documents it should not take more than 30 minutes to get your account approved.

How to buy crypto on the Luno exchange

As mentioned earlier, Luno’s trademark feature is the ability to buy bitcoin and ethereum instantly in their wallet interface using your credit card or fiat balance. However, if you look well enough, you’ll see that it also offers an exchange where users can buy crypto at market prices, without any exchange rate fee or other hidden costs. To access Luno’s exchange, click on the “Exchange” tab highlighted in red in the screenshot above.

Don’t be afraid by the numbers and scary graphs. Buying crypto through the exchange is a walk through the park once you get the hang of it! First, select the right trading pair by clicking on the sandwich menu (highlighted in red) on the top left of the navigation bar. This will show you all available trading pairs. To buy bitcoin with euros, we select the trading pair BTC/EUR.

On the left-hand side you can see the orderbook of the exchange. In green are the offers of buyers and in red are the offers of people selling bitcoin. On the right-hand side you see the list of trades that were filled moments ago. They can serve as a good indicator of how much you should bid if you want your order to be filled (i.e matched by a seller) pretty much instantly. In our case a bid at €8400 seems reasonable for instance.

To place the bid, we navigate to the order form at the bottom, click on the “buy” tab, submit our bid price and how much bitcoin we want to buy at this price. Next, press on “place buy order”, confirm and your order is submitted. Just next to the order form, you can track the status of your open orders. If your order is not there it means it was filled already and you can access it in your wallet.

Depositing funds into Luno

Of course, submitting an order is only possible if you have money in your Luno account. Unfortunately, you can’t deposit funds directly through the exchange interface so you have to go back to the wallet, which you do best by clicking on the menu tab mentioned before and then selecting “settings”. This will lead you straight back to the wallet from where you can conveniently fund your account. To deposit fiat, click on the respective currency wallet (Euros in our case) and then choose the option “Deposit”. You will see a range of different payment options depending on where you are located. If you want to keep your costs down, avoid the credit/debit card option and go for bank transfer. Also, be careful to read the instructions when you pay. If the bank account from which you are sending the funds is not under your name for instance, your deposit might get rejected.