Alternatives in same market segment as SpectroCoin?

[ashkoba]

I'm not caught up on every thread about SpectroCoin that's ever been posted here, but first I wanted to say I've found them to be a helpful service this year to directly connect cryptocurrency transactions with a mostly reliable IBAN/SEPA account: offered in the customer's own name, so they can be used like any other bank. In fact I don't know if there is any other direct IBAN provider that will cash crypto out into Euro & other currencies or purchase cryptocurrencies.

By "market segment" in the title, I mean EMIs handling crypto... rather than crypto exchanges offering IBAN support through third party processors. The popular choice AdvCash has no breakdown of the exchange rate markup for their crypto-to-fiat conversions (observed to be a very wide spread, in addition to their fees) and has no trading screens like at the SpectroCoin Pro link below, so I would also not consider AdvCash to be in the same market segment.

For those who haven't used SpectroCoin before, they have a Pro version which offers fiat/crypto trading pairs, and the fiat balance can be withdrawn into your currency wallet on the main web site. For example, to transfer EUR out through SEPA from an IBAN account after a crypto sale, you would first transfer XRP to your SpectroCoin Pro wallet and then convert it here: Cryptocurrency Exchange and Trading Platform | SpectroCoin Pro

Though I've had some operational problems with SpectroCoin over the last several months, I've been able to work through them... but the biggest unanswered question is over the liquidity in these crypto/fiat pairs, which appears unusually low. I'm happy for now to be with a small operator in a relatively private regulatory jurisdiction, but anyone can see from the screen above that the spread for all but the smallest transactions gets very wide.

I've been able to work around this with repeated transactions close to the market price, but for transactions over a couple hundred EUR, submitting all those small orders to make up the total is like playing a video game. Also: SpectroCoin offers a EUR 25K daily limit: but you can see from the "Total [crypto] available" on each trading pair that they don't have anywhere near those amounts of crypto or its fiat equivalent in any trading pair.

So I would be curious if SpectroCoin has any partners and/or competitors with similar services and enough liquidity to offer greater volume and smaller spreads. As far as I know the XRP/EUR pair is the most liquid, and at the time of this writing orders of over 1000 EUR (≈ 1000 XRP) are +/- 10% above and below the market prices... suggesting a very small amount of liquidity. I'd happily go on using SpectroCoin for smaller crypto-to-fiat conversions as long as I could find a complementary service that would handle the larger orders.

 

[OG999]

I find it strange how post like this go with no comment. Is it because no one has an answer or is it that they don't want to be involved with these discussions? Maybe i'm off by saying this. As for myself I am a ADVcash user and as of now I don't have a answer for this question. But like OP i would also like to know this information.

Anyways, like I said above. I am(Happily) a ADVcash user. They have been an intricate part of my crypto life. I would love to see the spread a little more clearer while making a fiat sale with their service. It definitely would be useful, even if it was just for accounting purposes.

With that said and everything @ashkoba has stated above.

other then Spectrocoin and Advcash, what other companies are out there that can offer enough liquidity to handle the larger transactions/ and are running for less than 5.5% fees.

A small amount of discussion on these topics can help a lot of other people in our space.

 

[drysky]

Can't help you with an alternative but using spectrocoin for a while without issues. Usually transferring around 50-60k EUR/week into it and cashing it out in BTC and sending it to my hw wallet.
Only had a problem once with ETH where it took forever to get the transaction to go through, which was probably a liquidity issue as you mentioned.
Anyway, besides that nothing to complain about it. Connect it with Bankera and it's even better.

 

[ashkoba]

thanks @drysky - though I still hope to attract some experience in this thread from people who have looked at the cost of using SpectroCoin & similar services: not merely whether they do the fiat-to-crypto conversion without difficulties. I'm not surprised SpectroCoin can convert large amounts of euro to Bitcoin... but could they do the same volume economically in the other direction, buying euro with Bitcoin? In any case I do know SpectroCoin's service page says they limit outgoing transfers to €50K per month.

For someone not looking precisely at the fees, or not trying to optimise the conversion by trading like on SpecroCoin Pro, SpectroCoin and AdvCash probably work about the same... roughly 6% loss on buying fiat with crypto. Like @OG999 said above, that fee was automatic with AdvCash, and at SpectroCoin when I tried a test transaction they quoted about 6% in fees (deducted from the effective exchange rate) for a €1000 cash-out from XRP to EUR.

I submitted a ticketed customer enquiry to SpectroCoin about the reason for this 6% deduction, and it was never answered. When I pressed them, a junior person responded to say it was because of "volatility" (!). When I investigated more I found that 10% spread (reported above) in the SpectroCoin Pro trading screens for orders over about €500... so the 6% fee could well have been the result of selling all the open orders at the time... about half close to the trading price, and then half with that 10% spread after the liquidity was reduced. I attempted to confirm this with SpectroCoin support, as a follow-up to that same ticket... and they never answered the enquiry.

Anyway I will probably keep trying to cash-out through SpectroCoin as a last resort, submitting small orders that don't overwhelm the small liquidity for sale close to the market fiat-to-crypto exchange rates... but I would still like to find alternatives for people making larger trades and/or doing crypto-to-fiat conversions outside a crypto exchange where users don't face a markup or spread of several percentage points.

 

[Fred]

What's mentioned here is pretty similar with all Crypto Wallets that provide in-house Exchange - take a look at Quppy - they stopped just recently issuing IBAN's in clients name and now the Deposit and Withdraw happens in Quppy's name - powered by ClearJunction.

They don't have a fancy looking "Pro" Version however the fees with 5% are pretty much the same - I can imagine that the PRO Version of SepctroCoin is the same like the usual one just looking more fancy but same fees.

Globitex is what you are looking for - they claim to be mainly an Exchange and provide you with IBAN as well - I can't comment on how there fees and market prices are - at least it looks like they are acting like a real Exchange.

There are some more EMI's however they don't have integrated Exchange - just integrated OTC service.

 

[uplana]

Deposit and Withdraw happens in Quppy's name

same as currenxie! it's not worth it unless it is the last solution you can find.