How to Buy Bitcoin in Sri Lanka

If you are a Sri Lankan, you may find most of popular bitcoin exchanges do not allow to buy bitcoin for Sri Lankans. Bitcoin exchanges such as Coinbase, GDAX do not offers their services to Sri Lanka. In the other hand some bitcoin exchanges do not offer flexible payment methods to deposit LKR or fiat currency and buy bitcoin. Most of such exchanges offer international bank wire transfer as their deposit method. Examples are Kraken, Bitfinex. I know that most of Sri Lankans want to use the most easiest payment methods such as credit card or debit card payments, paypal to buy bitcoin or ethereum instead of these lengthy and time consuming deposit methods.

There are several bitcoin exchanges that offer easier payment methods to Sri Lankans to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrency. I would like to list those bitcoin exchanges.

1. CEX.io

CEX.io is a popular bitcoin exchange where you can buy bitcoin using your credit card or debit card. If you have a Visa or Mastercard credit/debit card, then you can just link your card and do the deposit or payment and buy bitcoin. Other than bitcoin you can buy ethereum, bitcoin cash, ripple, dash, stellar, bitcoin gold and Zcash at CEX.io

Please not that sometimes there will be degraded performance in card deposits. Therefore always check their stats page to ensure that card deposits are operational when you deposit money.

This is the link to check their current stats: https://status.cex.io/

I recently noted myself that some cards such as Sampath Visa debit cards cannot be linked to CEX.io. Commercial bank and HNB cards should be fine though.

2. LocalBitcoins

LocalBitcoins is a site where you can find local bitcoin sellers which means you can find sellers who accept LKR through local bank transfer and cash deposit. If you cannot trust a seller, there are sellers who are willing arrange a meetup and do the transaction. 

Other than payments in LKR, you can also find sellers who accept Paypal, Payoneer, Skrill, Neteller payments in USD or EUR. However, sellers who accept paypal or payoneer payments may not be Sri Lankan sellers. Therefore, you can find bitcoin sellers with variety of payment methods in LocalBitcoins. However, LocalBitcoins act as the middleman for the transaction and doesn't offer a guarantee about the seller. Therefore, it is recommended to choose a seller with almost 100% positive feedback to buy bitcoins.

3. Coinmama

Coinmama is another cryptocurrency exchange which accepts credit card or debit card payments. You can buy major cryptocurrency such as bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin, bitcoin cash, cardano, ethereum classic and Qtum at Coinmama. 

4. Pauxful

Pauxful is another website similar to LocalBitcoins. There are sellers who accept variety of payment methods including Paypal, Payoneer, Skrill and Neteller. Always check the seller's positive feedback/ratings before buy bitcoins as you need to buy your bitcoin from trusted seller.

If you are a Sri Lankan, I hope above list will help you to buy bitcoin. Keep in mind that bitcoin exchanges such as CEX and Coinmama requires identity verification before start buying bitcoin.

You can also join our Sri Lankan cryptocurrency telegram group to discuss about cryptocurrency.

https://t.me/cryptocurrencysinhala