Paymium
Paymium is the first European Bitcoin marketplace compliant with EU regulations on payment services founded in 2011. The headquarter is in Paris, France.
Contents
Main information
- Country: France
- Headquarter: Paris
- Type: Payment Processor
- Round: Seed
- Cost: $1.12 million
- Date: 2-Sep-2015
- Investors: Newfund, Kima Ventures, Galitt[1]
Description
The bitcoin marketplace acts in accordance with EU regulations on payment services. It also provides merchants with business solutions and payment processors, while enabling them to accept bitcoin payments. Benefits of the platform includes reduction of transaction costs as well as minimal currency risks. It helps its users in keeping their bitcoins secured and in transferring bitcoins to various other storage means. Paymium also offers fee-free bitcoin transactions via mail.
Features
- Bank Cards Bitcoin Purchase.
- EUR/BTC exchange service
- Comply with European Regulations and accept SEPA Wire Transfer
- Send and receive Bitcoins by mail.
- Merchant Payment Services
- Easy to use API
- Store Bitcoins in cold storage for security.
Advantages
- Large European exchange. Paymium is based in France and offers its services globally. Additionally, it says it is the first European Bitcoin marketplace that complies with French and EU requirements for money transferring service.
- Accepts credit cards. Paymium accepts deposits through credit cards, but this is pretty much the only good thing that can be said about this. Read more in the disadvantages section.
- Limited unverified account. Paymium offers the option for a limited unverified account. It allows transfers of up to €2 500 before having to verify it. The transfer includes wire transfers for funding, amount engaged in bitcoin bids and amount earned from bitcoin sales.
- Trading platform. Paymium has two main trading options. One is the simple buy and sell bitcoin, and the other is what it calls “advanced trading”. It offers charts and graphs with real time data, advanced features for expert traders and customization tools. There is also an order book and order history feature.
- Mobile app. Paymium offers its own mobile trading application for Android and iOS devices. It allows users to create alerts, manage orders and positions and to pay in Bitcoins instantly.
- Convenient Payment methods. In addition to credit cards, which are subject to a lot of limitations, Paymium accepts payments through a SEPA bank transfer (EU) and in Bitcoin.
- Low Transfer fees. Deposits via SEPA to Paymium are free of charge and withdrawals cost just €0.99. Incoming and outgoing transfers in Bitcoin are free of charge. The company even covers the network fee.
- Merchant services. Paymium offers integration of Bitcoin payment services for merchants, which is not offered by many exchanges. The service comes with 0% fees and automatic conversion into euros.
Disadvantages
- Not regulated. The situation with bitcoin exchanges regulation is still quite fuzzy and the lack of regulation is relative. On one hand, in EU there are no specific regulatory requirements for cryptocurrencies and exchanges, at least not yet. On the other, the lack of regulation and oversight can be quite risky. Nevertheless, this does not necessarily mean that the company is a scam.
- Bitcoin only. The only cryptocurrency Paymium offers, is Bitcoin. Surely, it is the most popular, to the extent of becoming almost synonymous with “cryptocurrencies”, but other major European exchanges like Bitstamp, offer others as well.
- no leveraged trading. Paymium does not provide the option for leveraged trading, similarly to the majority of cryptocurrency exchanges. There are a few, though, who offer this option, like Kraken, CexIo and Quoinex. There are also forex brokers who have included CFDs on cryptocurrencies for speculative trading on margin.
- credit card limitations. Paymium accepts payments with credit cards, which is a convenience for its clients. There, however, are quite a few limitations. First off, the company does not accept prepaid or company cards and cards that are not issued by a French bank. Second, the bank transfer fee for cards is 8%. Thirdly, Paymium accepts credit cards only on verified accounts. There is a limit of only one purchase per day and a total of €1000 worth of bitcoin per month.
- slow verification. On its own site Paymium says the customer verification applications are place in a queue and the completion of the process takes between one and two weeks. This is quite a long period of time, considering that some exchanges complete it in a few hours, while others – in a few days. But weeks is a lot[2].
- high trading fees. At 0.59%, Paymium’s commission is in the average, going on high, but the low transfer fees compensate for it.