Xapo Exchange Review | 2019 Guide

What is Xapo?

Xapo is a wallet, card and exchange service for Bitcoin use. The company was first founded in Palo Alto, California in 2014. Due to regulatory instability, the company relocated to Switzerland after which it became incorporated in Hong Kong. Xapo currently operates worldwide, having offices in both Hong Kong and Palo Alto.

Wences Casares is the CEO of Xapo, who has over two decades of entrepreneurship experience in the technology industry.

Xapo is led by a team of legitimate businessmen and entrepreneurs that have created many successful companies over the years.

Supported Currencies

Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency for which Xapo provides storage and exchange services. This can be very discouraging for those that are looking to transact with more types of digital assets. On the other hand, Xapo supports a wide variety of fiat currencies, accepting USD, GBP, EUR, CNY, RUB, and JPY as well as less popular fiat currency options such as Bhutanese Ngultrums (BTN) and Zambian Kwacha (ZMK).

Supported Countries

Xapo’s services are available on a global level, even to US residents.

Registration Requirements

To register for an account on Xapo, you will need to provide the following information:

• A mobile phone number
• An email address
• A selfie photo

But to have access to all available features and products, you will need to have your identity verified. For this, you will have to provide the following documents:

• An official government-issued photo ID
• Proof of address in your name

The ID documents must be in color and to fully display your name, date of birth and expiration date.

Fees

Xapo’s fees depend on the method you use to deposit or withdraw your funds, as well as the amount in question. Deposits can be made via Credit Card, Debit Card, Bank Transfer, and Cash. Credit card deposits naturally come with higher fees.

Bank transfers incur the lowest fees. After you have made your fiat deposit you can purchase Bitcoin for no fee at near market value.

Sending Bitcoin from your Xapo account to an external wallet will incur a standard fee of 0.00011735 BTC or you can opt to have that transaction processed faster by paying a fee of BTC 0.00013578.

The Wallet fees are as follow:

• More than BTC 0.00038802: 0 fee
• Between BTC 0.00025868 and BTC 0.00038802: BTC 0.00025868 fee
• Less than BTC 0.00025868: Total amount received

The fees for the Vault service are:

• More than BTC 0.00057223: 0 fee
• Between BTC 0.00038149 and BTC 0.00057223: BTC 0.00038149 fee
• Less than BTC 0.00038149: Total amount received

The Xapo Debit Card costs $20 to order the card. When you make purchases in your card spending currency, no fees are applied. Purchasing in other currencies, however, comes with a 3% Foreign Exchange fee. ATM withdrawals come with a fixed fee.

Xapo Security

Xapo is reputed for its wallet security. Users are able to shift their funds with no worries between online and vault storage. Access to various sections of the user account requires 2FA and an additional pin code.

Regarding the storage of its funds, Xapo states that they“Combine the convenience of an everyday Bitcoin wallet with the security of a deep cold storage vault.” This is further explained in their FAQ section:

“Deep cold storage is a type of cold storage where not only are bitcoins stored offline, but also the system that holds the bitcoins were never online or connected to any kind of network. The private keys associated with that system were generated in offline systems, and the signing process of the transactions is also made in offline systems. The systems used in this type of storage never touch the Internet; they are created offline, they are stored offline, and they are offline when signing transactions.”

In short, this means that the users’ Bitcoin funds are never held online, thus they are completely safe from hacks.

When registering for a Xapo account, you will be required to create a PIN and a password to keep your account secure.

Xapo Customer Support

Customers can contact Xapo via email, Twitter and Facebook at the following addresses:

• Email: [email protected]
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/xapo
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/xapoapp

Xapo reportedly has very poor customer support, and the sheer number of bad online complaints seem to back this up. People found it very hard to get help from Xapo’s staff whatever their issue was.

User Complaints

Unfortunately, the online forums and site reviews are full of many negative experiences and complaints regarding Xapo. People have complained that the transaction fees are incredibly costly. Others have stated that while funding the wallet was easy when they wanted to send BTC to other addresses or withdraw their funds, nothing would budge.

Some customers have reported that their funds have been drained from their Xapo wallets. From what we noticed, most complaints are about the funds being locked by the operator.

While most users do not consider Xapo to be a scam, they believe that the service is not worth the bother due to its poor quality.

Verdict

Xapo does offer a convenient way of purchasing Bitcoin with a large variety of fiat currencies, but the huge number of online complaints regarding fund transfers and withdrawals raises some red flags.

coindoo

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