Skrill Now Lets You Swap BTC for BCH

Online payments service Skrill has introduced a new feature allowing users to directly exchange cryptocurrencies. The crypto-to-crypto option gives you the opportunity to use bitcoin core (BTC) stored in your wallet to buy and sell eight other supported cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin cash (BCH).

Buy Crypto With Crypto

Skrill, formerly known as Moneybookers, is popular in Europe where it’s used for online payments with 15,000 merchants as well as international money transfers. The U.K.-based e-wallet provider is one of those established payment systems that have opened to decentralized digital currencies in the past couple of years. The company recently tweeted:

Buying and selling crypto with Skrill just got even better. Introducing crypto-to-crypto – a new feature that lets you use your bitcoin balance to buy and sell the other 8 cryptocurrencies we offer.

Having an in-app coin swap option is a great addition to any payment platform as users can save on fees for additional exchange transactions involving fiat. Bitcoin.com’s own non-custodial wallet lets you exchange between BTC and BCH within the app through an integration with the automated coin swap platform Sideshift.

Skrill pleasantly surprised crypto enthusiasts when it introduced the option to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrencies last summer. Its app, available for both Android and iOS devices, lets you purchase crypto with over 100 payment methods and conversion of 40 different fiat currencies into BTC, BCH, EOS, ETH, ETC, LTC, XLM, XRP, and ZRX.

The platform, along with another well-known e-money service, Neteller, is part of the London-headquartered Paysafe Group. Its operator, Skrill Limited, is a company registered as a money service business regulated by Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority and licensed to operate within the European Economic Area (EEA).

No Additional Verification Required

To take advantage of the new service, you need to create an account providing your name, country of residence, local fiat currency, and valid email address. As a regulated entity, Skrill has some security and identity verification procedures in place but its website states that buying cryptocurrency does not involve any additional verification.

Certain fees apply to crypto trading operations. There’s a €0.99 fee on crypto purchases and sales up to €19.99, transactions between €20 and €99.99 are charged €1.99, and 1.50% commission is due for those above €100. Peer to peer trades are charged with a flat 0.50% fee for euro, U.S. dollar or other currency denominated transactions. Withdrawals to a local bank account or via global Swift transfers are now charged €5.50, while the fee for withdrawals to a Visa card account is 7.50%.

Note that some fee changes will come into effect on Jan. 15, 2020. For instance, the upload funds fee will become 2.50% for non-EEA countries. The regular upload fee for local and global payment methods including BTC is currently 1.00%. After the specified date, the domestic transactions fee will be 2% per transaction and the currency conversion fee may be as high as 3.99% per transaction.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.