Luno is a well known bitcoin exchange in South Africa. In this basic guide will show you the how to begin using the exchange by registering, and then buying bitcoin.
Steps we go through are (click a step to jump ahead):
- Sign up for an account with Luno
- Verify your account
- Deposit money into Luno
- Buy bitcoin with ‘Instant Buy’
- Place a ‘buy order’ to buy bitcoin on the exchange
To buy and sell bitcoin on Luno you need to register first, to do this you can use our promo code (BKFEF) which will reward you and us both with R25 in free bitcoin if you spend R500. Follow this link to register today https://www.luno.com
Sign up on Luno
Once you click to go to www.luno.com, your screen will look like the picture below. Follow the steps to register and redeem the promo code.
On the next screen you will be able to Sign up using your email address, and your password. Complete this step, then immediately check your email for the confirmation email that they send you.
In your email, click the blue “Confirm Email Address” button. When you do this, you will be taken back to the Luno website.
At the Luno website you will now be able to continue by pressing the “Continue” button.
Congratulations! You are now registered on luno.com, and can now verify your identity and make a deposit to buy some bitcoin.
Verifying your identity
As a new user on the exchange, you will be a Level 0 account, which means you have not yet verified your identity or basic personal details. Level 1 account means you are limited to a total of R15000 deposit and withdrawal. So it is important to verify your identity as soon as possible.
A level 2 account is limited to R50 000 per deposit and withdraw per month, and the level 3 account has no limits. Verify your account by submitting your ID and proof of residence, and you will have an unlimited account. Make it easy on yourself by having a digital copy of your ID and an up to date bank statement showing your address ready to upload to their website for review.
To start the verification process, click the “Settings” button in the left menu, and then the “Upgrade” link on the Personal details page.
Complete the steps, by adding all your details, and uploading your ID and bank statement. Once your documents have been reviewed, your account will be upgraded from Level 0 to Level 1, 2 or 3, depending on how much information you have submitted.
Depositing Rand so that you can buy bitcoin
Once you have verified your account, you will be able to deposit money and buy bitcoin. Once your deposit has cleared in the Luno bank account, it will display in the Rand wallet when you check your wallets in the Luno website. With that balance of Rand you can purchase bitcoin.
To make a deposit you need to click on “Wallets” in the left menu of the website. Once you are on the wallets page, you must click the “Deposit” link at the bottom of your ZAR wallet.
On the next screen you will see the main banks in South Africa. Click the bank you would like to use when you make a deposit to Luno.
Now that you have chosen a bank, you need to tell Luno how much money you will be depositing into your account.
After pressing “next”, you will be shown a screen with the reference you need to use for the payment, as well as the Luno banking details. Use the details when making an EFT from your bank account to the Luno bank account. Be sure to use your unique reference number as the beneficiary reference when doing the deposit.
Once you have made the deposit, you will need to wait for your funds to clear in the Luno bank account before they will show in your ZAR wallet. This can take up to 2 business days. As soon as you have your funds showing in your ZAR wallet, you will be able to buy bitcoin.
UPDATE: How to buy bitcoin on Luno and pay less fees
Buy bitcoin with ‘Instant Buy’
There are two ways to buy bitcoin on Luno. The first way is to make an “Instant Buy”, which is fast, but you pay a premium for your bitcoin. The second way to buy is to make a “buy order” on the exchange, and wait for someone to fill your order.
Once logged into Luno.com, press the “Buy” button on the home screen.
You will be taken to the Instant Buy / Sell screen. On this screen you will be able to switch between BTC and ZAR. When you are on BTC you will need to put in the amount you want to buy. When you are ZAR, you will need to put in how much you want to spend.
Once you have selected the amount of bitcoin you want to buy, or how much ZAR you want to spend, you can click the “Buy” button to complete the order.
The Instant Buy option on Luno is at a premium. You will pay more for your bitcoin than if you place a buy order on the exchange. This is for the ease and convenience of the instant buy option.
Place a buy order to buy bitcoin on Luno exchange
To place a buy order you need to go to the Exchange after logging into Luno. Click the “Exchange” link in the left menu to place your order.
When you open the exchange, you will see existing Buy and Sell orders on the left.
You will see the “Place Order” box where you can place Buy and Sell orders on the exchange. When you place a buy order to purchase some bitcoin, your order will be matched with an existing sell order. If your buy order is not able to be 100% filled, then the remaining amount that has not been filled will be listed with the other buy orders until it is filled.
The Place order box has a BTC field, where you put in the amount of BTC you want to buy or sell. The second field is the ZAR field, where you put in the price per bitcoin that you want to buy or sell bitcoin at.
To buy quickly, you can make sure the ZAR field is the same as the best or lowest Sell order (in red on the left). This will mean your order will be able to be matched to an existing sell order. To match the lowest existing sell order, click the order in the order book that you want to match, to put that bitcoin price into the ZAR field in the Place Order box.
If you would like to spend all of your available Rand balance to buy bitcoin, you can click your available balance amount, and the BTC field will automatically update in the order box to the correct amount of bitcoin that you can purchase at the bitcoin price that you have chosen.
By matching with an existing order, you will be the taker of the order, and will pay 1% in fees for taking the trade.
When you are ready you can click the “Place Buy Order” button to place your order. A popup will appear, and you need to click to confirm your transaction.
Once you have confirmed your transaction, your balance will be updated. When you check your wallets on the exchange, your bitcoin wallet will be showing the bitcoin you have purchased, and your ZAR wallet will have reduced by the amount you spent on bitcoin.
UPDATE: How to buy bitcoin on Luno and pay less fees
If you have any specific questions on buying bitcoin, please comment below and we can answer and also add to this blog post.
You dont have to pay anything to join Luno. If you want to buy some bitcoin you can deposit Rand and then exchange it to bitcoin.
i deposited 500 into the reference number but the bank put the first letter as capital letters and the rest in small does that mater?
I dont think so…
There is no joining fee to use Luno. If you buy bitcoin and take an existing trade on the exchange, the most you will pay is 1%. Not sure where you are getting the R8000 figure from…
Yes if you have money on the exchange. I am not sure what the minimum deposit is on Luno, but once your money is there, you can buy even R10 worth if you want.
I’m having problems withdrawing funds(in fiat currency) from my luno account back into my bank. The website continuously shows my amount is invalid…this is not the case at all.
I have withdrawen before without any problems.
I have sent two tickets for help but have had no reply on first ticket which was more than 48hrs ago.
Have you verified your account properly? I know their are limits on accounts that are not fully verified, maybe that could be your problem. Outside of their support helpdesk I am not sure what you can do…maybe you can tweet to them or leave a message or review on their facebook page.
On Luno if you use the instant buy/sell option, you will pay a much higher price for bitcoin….with ETH at the moment that is the only option, as they do not have a market. If you need to use your ETH for its intended purpose, you can withdraw it to your own wallet. I am assuming that you bought it for speculating on the price…in which case you can wait to see if the price goes up, and sell it for a profit.
Can I ask a potentially silly question about the exchange please? I think I understand how the sell and buy orders work, but how does that match up with the quantity of bitcoin available? For example, seller x offers their bitcoin at y rate, and buyers who are happy with that price place their orders – but what if the buyer wants 0.02 bitcoin and the seller who listed at the rate the buyer is happy with only has 0.01 bitcoin available in their wallet? My apologies if I am missing something obvious! 😉
The remaining unfilled part of the order will be listed with the rest of the unfilled buy orders already on the site. So in your example the seller will sell his 0.01 to the buyer, and the buyer will then have a buy order for 0.01 remaining that will stay in the order book until it is filled by a seller, or they cancel it.
Luno wallet app is an app that connects to your wallet on the exchange. You do not get your private keys, they basically owe you the bitcoin you store on their exchange. They are pretty safe and secure, but if you have bitcoin of a significant value, it would be better to store it on a hardware wallet. Personally I dont leave any bitcoin I am not trading on any exchange….I dont care how good they are.
after buying bitcoin with r50 what happens next still co fused as to what I need to do as I used the instant buy
once you have bought bitcoin, then you have it, same as if you used instant buy. Having bitcoin is the end result of a buy order or the instant buy option. You can then wait for the price to rise, and sell it at a profit, or hold onto it for a while as an investment.
Is my ZAR wallet safe as i deposit money everytime without withdrawing
Yes it is safe.
i deposited R100 and i bought bitcoins from my zar account, what is the next step
and the zar account is now zero balance.How much can this value (BTC 0.00037408) make me during the time?
If the price of bitcoin goes up since you bought it, you can sell it for a profit. So if the price goes up 20%, you can sell it for R120 for example.
Can someone help me ???, It has been weeks now and I can’t get my Luno account verified or unlocked after various calls logged through their site. Is there another way to get hold of these Lunoticks ?? Now absolutely fed up with them. Just want to get my money transferred back into my bank account, already opened an account with Ice and been running smoothly with them. Please help !
You can log a ticket with Luno at https://www.luno.com/help/en/tickets/new
If you have already done this I am not sure what else you can do except maybe contact them on twitter or their facebook page with your ticket number
Yes, click that and the order will be cancelled and removed from the order book
Hi there when the Bitcoin price was high i sold into my ZAR wallet, byt there was a deduction of about R40 and when i bought bitcoin again when the price went down again a R40 deduction is this standard Admin fee?
If you use the exchange trading platform you will pay a maximum of 1% for the trade. If you paid R40, that could be 1% in fees for your trade. If you use the instant buy / sell option, you are not using the exchange and will pay a high fee for the convenience. There are no admin fees that I know of.
If you use the exchange, there might be a 1% trading fee depending on if you take an existing trade or make a trade (pay 0% fee). If you use the quick buy/sell option, the fee is higher than 1%, but not sure what that is exactly, I think its a sliding scale based on the volume.
Yes it is. Go to your wallet and choose to Send bitcoin. Send bitcoin from your Luno wallet to your Airbitz wallet address. You might need to first open your Airbitz wallet, choose to receive bitcoin, and copy the address. You can then use that address by pasting it when sending from Luno.
It seems to work fine for me….are you getting an error? If you choose a price that is for an existing buy or sell order it will be instant, but you will pay the taker fee of 1%, which is still better than the Quick Buy/Sell.
Luno and other exchanges have been having issues recently, you can read more here: https://www.bitcoinzar.co.za/cryptocurrency-exchanges-struggle-influx-new-users/
You can leave it indefinitely
Im so lost. I followed instructions to the T but now to check the performance of my investment Im lost. How can I check
If you bought bitcoin, just multiply the amount of bitcoin you have by the current price. EG, if you bought 0.00125BTC you multiply that by R220595 = R274.74.
why is my funds still not reflecting in my wallet since I transferred 15.12.17
This seems unusually long and I have not received any response except a ticket number
All exchanges in South Africa and around the world are having a difficulty with the influx of new users, so there are delays on all fronts….if you have a ticket already, you will just have to wait for them to answer it.
wow
You can start with any amount really, but an amount of R250 and up will be more worth while for the effort
Will SARS be certain to tax bitcoin users? It is in the news but might be in a few months?
Just joined Luno after reading this today.
Registration, deposit of R200 and instant buy of R200 took me less than half an hour.
Thanks for the information and advice in all the comments here.
Are you wanting to treat it as an investment? If yes, then do nothing, maybe buy some more every month like a long term savings plan, and check on its value in a year or two. If you want to trade it, you can monitor the price and if it appreciates in value a few %, you can sell it for a profit.
Yes, but it is better to do an Electronic Funds Transfer, or they will charge you extra fees (ZAR 20.00 + 5.00% ). An EFT deposit is free.
I dont think it is possible as a Namibian
Monica, I have joined but it looks like I cant deposit money and buy BTC, I can only make use of the wallet. There also doesnt seem to be a means to contact them… You can buy BTC in Namibia via Localbitcoin
If I own a bitcoin, what and how do I benefit? Do I benefit monthly?
No you dont benefit monthly. If you own bitcoin it is like owning a commodity like gold….no monthly payment or income. When you sell your bitcoin you can make a profit if you sell it for more than you paid. Beware of any system that uses bitcoin and promises a monthly income.