One of Australia’s most interesting startups of 2016, CoinJar defines itself as a global personal finance company, which makes it possible for its users to buy and sell Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple and Litecoin and to make payments using the virtual currency, or other, fiat currencies. Despite being a relative late-comer to the crypto currency scene (it was launched in 2013),
CoinJar has racked up some 70,000 customers, especially from Australia and the US, and it’s gone through more than $100 million in processed transactions. The focus of the operation is on simplicity and security. Those who resort to the services offered by this exchange/payment service, are protected by multi-factor authentication. In addition to actually entering their account passwords, they will be verified via SMS. To make sure that no large-scale digital currency theft can occur under any circumstances, CoinJar keep the majority of their clients’ digital assets offline.
The About Us section of CoinJar.com, the official site of the operation, is not tight-lipped at all Babout the corporate background of the operator and the people behind the startup. It’s easy to learn that the business entity handling the European billing and clearing services for CoinJar is CoinJar UK Ltd, based at 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9JQ, registered in the UK under company number 8905988. CoinJar has apparently moved its operation to the UK in 2014.
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The two founders of the CoinJar service are Asher Tan and Ryan Zhou. General inquiries regarding the activity of the operation can be directed to info@coinjar.com. For business inquiries, business@coinjar.com should be used. Interestingly, customer support information is only available to those who have a registered account with the service.
How Does CoinJar Work?
Covered by various mainstream media bigwigs, such as Forbes, Reuters, The Guardian and The Australian – among others – CoinJar looks like a legitimate operation indeed. It doesn’t promise its customers too-good-to-be-true returns, nor does it peddle any suspicious bitcoins-for-nothing schemes.
CoinJar’s services are focused on money management, facilitating the spending, trading and sending of various currencies and crypto currencies. The supported currency-pool is currently limited to USD, GBP and BTC.
The spending aspect of the service is one of its main attractions. Through it, users can pay anyone, anywhere in the world, in under 6 seconds, with zero fees involved. Making purchases with Bitcoin is possible through the CoinJar mobile app, CoinJar Touch, by scanning QR codes, through Bitcoin address, through CoinJar username and through CoinJar Swipe, a special EFTPOS Bitcoin card. Through this virtual network of services, one can pay for anything with bitcoins, even small, mundane purchases such as a cup of coffee.
CoinJar Touch makes it easy for users to transfer bitcoins back and forth and to transfer virtual currency between different accounts at CoinJar. A bank account can also be added to the fold, rounding out one’s financial profile.
A total of 196 countries are covered by CoinJar’s Bitcoin sending service. CoinJar trading comes with transparent fees (usually 1%) and proper support for a change.
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At the end of the day, CoinJar wants to be much more than a Bitcoin wallet or a digital currency exchange. It is said to be the fastest way to access one’s money from anywhere in the world.
The CoinJar Website
The domain authority of Coinjar.com is decent at 43/100 and its spam rating is 0. Everything seems to point to the fact that we are indeed dealing with a legitimate operator here. Some 16 unique domains link to coinjar.com, every one of them reputable and relevant for the vertical. There’s a lot of user discussion out there about coinjar and thus there are some spammy back-links in that profile too, but nothing unexpected and out of the ordinary. The coinjar.com domain was first registered in 2000, so it is now 17 years old.
The organization which registered the domain is indeed CoinJar UK Ltd. and the registrant information is public.
CoinJar User Feedback
CoinJar’s crew has always been in close contact with the community, putting everything up for debate, from the actual domain name of the operation (which in the beginning was coinjar.io, as coinjar.com was held hostage by a domain squatter), to the technology powering their virtual currency wallet. While most customer feedback was and is positive, there are some complaints, mostly regarding the speed with which bitcoins are delivered to buyers’ CoinJar wallets. Though the operation claims to make instant transfers, there were users out there who made their deposits on a Friday and didn’t get their bitcoins transferred till Monday.
Others have pointed out that none of the other Australian Bitcoin sellers required personal information from their customers.
At various times, the CoinJar platform was overwhelmed by user demand, and there were times when the team had to fall back to manual processing.
While most of the relevant CoinJar community chatter takes place at bitcointalk.org, there are a few Reddit topics open where – mixed in with overwhelmingly positive reviews – there are a few complaints present too. One such complaint states that the operator didn’t deliver the required bitcoins to one of its users 10 days after a deposit had been made. Negative feedback-wise, one always has to exercise at least some level of caution though: crooked competitors may attempt to wreck the reputation of a company through fake complaints.
CoinJar Review Conclusion
Everything considered, CoinJar seems to be a legitimate operation indeed. Unlike some of the other similar services we have thus far reviewed, their corporate profile is spotless and transparent, the CEOs don’t shy away from taking part in community discussions about the services their company offers, and the user feedback is indeed overwhelmingly positive. Yes, there have apparently been hiccups with the service, but malicious intent on the part of the operator cannot really be proved.
Negative reviews are few and far between, and most of them seem to have been solved amicably a long time ago. The CoinJar support staff is responsive and helpful for the most part, which – considering the nature of the industry and the general trends in this respect – is quite an asset indeed.
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Update (November 26, 2017): Since we first posted this review, negative feedback about Coinjar has piled up. More and more people complain about their funds getting stuck in limbo at the site, due to the lengthy approval procedures, or who knows what. The support side of the operation seems to be non-existent, when it comes to sorting out these problems. While some of the stuck-funds issues do end up sorted out, there are people out there who genuinely feel that they have lost their monies to Coinjar. Whatever the case, in this day and age, keeping users’ funds hung up for several weeks, without word from support, is not proper MO. That said, the positive feedback is still there. Some people seem happy with their Coinjar experience, and indeed, many of these people are verified users of the service.
The bottom line is that while Coinjar cannot be called a scam, something is certainly not right about it. We wouldn’t like tens of thousands of dollars of our own stuck in limbo either. This is unacceptable, even if it only happens once in a blue moon. With that in mind, we’ll have to caution users against readily transferring significant funds to the operator, at least until this funds-in-limbo/inexistent-support act is cleaned up.
What’s your experience with CoinJar? Are you among those who consider it a scam or are you happy with the exchange? Drop a comment below and let us know!
Other good cryptocurrency exchanges for Australian residents include Binance, Changelly, and LocalBitcoins.
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coinjar is my first entry into the cryptoworld and it has been a disaster. These people are (in their own words) dealing with many millions of dollars, you would expect them to have good systems in place. But I have been waiting 2 weeks just to have my id to be verified. TWO WEEKS. you can go into a bank and do it in a minute. ebay, amazon, paypal, Australia post: instant access. Online banks: much much quicker. I have never even heard of uploading passport or driver’s licence (with photo).
Their “support” is …. well I don’t know where it is: have asked them about progress and not heard anything back!
They have all my details including driver licence, copy of bills and there is no response from them: I would call that a con. If starting up is so slow and cumbersome why would I TRUST them with my money?
These kids are way out of their depth: it is the silicon valley mantra to “think very big” and “you must fail many times”; in the meantime we all get screwed while a couple of 20-something kids from melbourne milk the system and get super rich.
coinjar is a con.
Have also been scammed by coinjar for over $13k because funds went into a different account and they removed it now they claim it can’t be tracked but must have all the details of this guy scam scam scam
I am still new to the crypto space however I can already say that Coinjar’s cons greatly outweigh its pros
First the pros: POLi deposit take seconds and the $2500/day limit is good. The hedged account enables you to keep your money in BTC fixed to a dollar value – great for when BTC goes down or if the market is volatile and you don’t want to keep watching it.
CONS:
Summary: FEES FEES FEES You can’t do ANYTHING within Coinjar without being charged fees!
1. Buying BTC? 1 % fee applies on top of the inflated exchange rate
2. Selling BTC? Another 1% fee again on top of a fake exchange rate
3. Transferring your BTC anywhere outside Coinjar? Prepare to have a big chunk of your BTS taken.
4. Using Coinjar Swipe? the card does not store currency in BTC, you have to transfer your BTC to dollars to charge the card, yep! Another 1% fee!
Being constantly bitten by visible and hidden fees makes using coinjar very cost ineffective.
Another huge Coinjar con is the lack of any other cryptocurrencies.
By comparison, The only fees charged at Coinbase are on purchase of currency. The integrated GDAX exchange enables the user to freely transfer between BTC, ETH, BCH and LTC. Transfers to other enchanges or wallets is free!
The AUD/BTC exhange rate on Coinjar is overinflated. At the moment of this comment BTS on Coinbase is A$18,697, while on Coinjar it is A$19,398. That is nearly 4% difference!
The ONLY reason I will keep Coinjar is the ability to quickly purchase up to A$2500 of BTC albeit at an inflated rate, and also the ability to maintain BTC in a hedged account.
I sent a POLI deposit of over $1K on Friday 15/12/17 and today it is 22/12/17 and the deposit is still pending. I have contacted support many times both via the website support ticket system and sending support an email direct, but no response. The reasons for pending a POLI deposit on their FAQ’s do not pertain to me because this is my first POLI deposit with them. I am thinking they have stolen my money, because POLI advised me (I rang them) that the transaction went through from my bank account to coinjar via the POLI platform instantly and that if coinjar is not acknowledging that then coinjar are doing something illegal. POLI do not hold any funds they merely act as a conduit for the payment to go through smoothly between customer and merchant. There is no reason for coinjar to hold ANY deposits as pending as it has nothing to do with their so called security protocols, what it has to do with is that large deposits get stolen by coinjar. the australian banking system is fast and already secure. Coinjar are not. BEWARE everyone. Coinjar’s Melbourne based phone number is useless, their automated message says they don’t offer phone support. My coinjar account is fully verified.
They seriously need to sort this out, I know they are most probably back logged, but providing links on webpages that go nowhere, or have display issues, support and knowledge base, are not a good idea here.
I use coinjar and to date have had zero issues.
Signup, ID verification and bank setup took about 3 days. When i transfer funds via BPAY it takes about 2 days then gets put on ‘pending approval’ for about 2 hours before becoming available.
I think people these days are just way too impatient.
It’s really use to use and I’ve had no issues transferring to and back from my separate bitcoin wallet.
Peter please. Obviously you only send $10 at a time and have been a member from when Keeping up with The Flintstones was on TV.
Of course people will be impatient. A service offers to get them into the game. Accepts the money. Then sits idle as PENDING for weeks. That is not acceptable in today’s world. This company bit off more than they can chew. It clearly doesn’t have a capable back-`end.
I also am waiting for a deposit to show in my Coinjar account. Ten days ago I transferred money into coinjar from my bank ( Reputable Australian bank but not one of the major four.) After waiting seven days I contacted my bank and was assured that the money had been transferred from my account into the account and reference I gave. I had used this account before to deposit money into and although it took four days to transfer the first time I had been able to transfer it into a payees account without any hitches. After speaking to my bank I emailed Coinjar Support which is the only form of contact and almost immediately received a reply saying that a member of the support team would be in touch and that this typically took two hours though at busy times it could take longer. It is now another three days and I have sent another request for attention to this matter. Up to this point I have had no further replies.
Just lost 2k because Coinjar took too long to verify my documents. It says 1-3 business days for verification but mine have been 8 days and still waiting. It is true, they don’t give a darn about their customers.
I’m a Bitcoin beginner and just did the CoinJar sign up, verification, bank deposit and Bitcoin buy with a fairly small opening amount. All went smoothly and the whole process took just over 24hrs!
Question; can you buy other crypto’s other than Bitcoin with CoinJar?
I believe that you can only buy Bitcoin using CoinJar.
DO NOT EVER USE COINJAR. This is obviously a “paid” review. Coinjar have no customer support and are currently sitting on $85k of mine for no reason and I can’t get a response out of them. They have no phone number. I’ve just reported them to the financial services ombudsman, and the comment was “get in line – your one of hundreds”. They are operating in breach of requirements and are about to be banned in Australia.
Thank you for your feedback. Just to let you know: we NEVER post paid reviews, so No, don’t even go there.
That said, we can ABSOLUTELY understand that you’re at your wit’s end with $85k stuck with these guys. There can be no excuses for keeping such amounts stuck there with no word from support. That’s just despicable. We’ve altered the review to reflect your point of view/ordeal.
With all that though, there are scores of verified users out there, claiming they’re happy with the service, so we’re in a bit of a fix here: calling them a scam at this point would be stretching it…
This operation seems more like a poorly run one, with issues like yours occurring on account of negligence and plain old not giving a darn. Again: that’s still inexcusable.
Oh God. I feel sick. They have 36,600 of our savings. Frozen my account others pending. One tfr missing NO contacts
Yes Sim that will do me..im opting out. Good review
Coinjar is crap will never use them again waiting 2 weeks for deposit now saying I need to send a photo off my face with drivers liscense and signed coinjar note even though I verified everything when I registered? Stalling for time more like it