Coinmama and Binance are two exchanges that have different backgrounds and cater different target audiences. Even though Coinmama exists for much longer, Binance has managed to outgrow it by couple of orders of magnitude and sits comfortably at the top of the cryptocurrency exchange food of chain as the platforms with largest trading volume and widest coin offering.
This comparison will not be really fair as Binance and Coinmama only tangentially touch in a sense that they are both crypto exchanges but Coinmama is essentially only a fiat on-ramp while Binance is everything else but that; it is a complete ecosystem of crypto services with spot and margin trading, lending, staking, private wallets etc.
Still, we are going to do a drag race between them and see how they do.
What you'll learn 👉
Coinmama vs Binance: General info
Binance is one of the largest and most popular cryptocurrency exchanges which initially started in China but then relocated their headquarters to the crypto-friendly Island of Malta in the EU. Binance is popular for its crypto to crypto exchange services. The company raised around $15 million in an ICO in July 2017. It immediately acquired 20,000 registered users as part of the raise.
Binance exploded onto the crypto world in the mania of 2017 and has since gone on to become the top crypto exchange in the world.
Coinmama is a crypto exchange that was launched in 2013. Coinmama is officially registered in Slovakia but is owned by an Israeli-based New Bit Ventures Limited. It supports traders in 188 countries worldwide, and is also available in 24 US States.
Fees
Standard Binance trading fees are 0.1%, but by using Binance native token BNB, you can make considerable reduction to the fees, currently 25% less if you check the option to pay fees in BNB (instead of paying them in the coin you are buying).
| Type | Fee |
|---|---|
| Standard trading fee | 0.1% |
| Credit card purchase | The higher of either 3.5% or US$10 |
Trading fee discounts
| The discount | What it is | How much it is |
|---|---|---|
| BNB discount | A discount when paying trading fees with the BNB coin. | 25% discount |
| Tiered trading fee discounts | A discount for holding different amounts of BNB in your account while meeting trade volume requirements. | Reduces base trading fees to as low as a 0.02% maker fee and a 0.04% taker fee. |
Below is the comprehensive tabular overview of Binance fee structure:
| Level | 30d Trade Volume (BTC) | & | BNB Balance | Maker / Taker | Maker/TakerBNB 25% off | Maker/TakerBNB x Referral 25% off x Kickback 20% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VIP 0 | < 50 BTC | or | ≥ 0 BNB | 0.1000% / 0.1000% | 0.0750% / 0.0750% | 0.0600% / 0.0600% |
| VIP 1 | ≥ 50 BTC | & | ≥ 50 BNB | 0.0900% / 0.1000% | 0.0675% / 0.0750% | 0.0540% / 0.0600% |
| VIP 2 | ≥ 500 BTC | & | ≥ 200 BNB | 0.0800% / 0.1000% | 0.0600% / 0.0750% | 0.0480% / 0.0600% |
| VIP 3 | ≥ 1500 BTC | & | ≥ 500 BNB | 0.0700% / 0.1000% | 0.0525% / 0.0750% | 0.0420% / 0.0600% |
| VIP 4 | ≥ 4500 BTC | & | ≥ 1000 BNB | 0.0700% / 0.0900% | 0.0525% / 0.0675% | 0.0420% / 0.0540% |
| VIP 5 | ≥ 10000 BTC | & | ≥ 2000 BNB | 0.0600% / 0.0800% | 0.0450% / 0.0600% | 0.0360% / 0.0480% |
| VIP 6 | ≥ 20000 BTC | & | ≥ 3500 BNB | 0.0500% / 0.0700% | 0.0375% / 0.0525% | 0.0300% / 0.0420% |
| VIP 7 | ≥ 40000 BTC | & | ≥ 6000 BNB | 0.0400% / 0.0600% | 0.0300% / 0.0450% | 0.0240% / 0.0360% |
| VIP 8 | ≥ 80000 BTC | & | ≥ 9000 BNB | 0.0300% / 0.0500% | 0.0225% / 0.0375% | 0.0180% / 0.0300% |
| VIP 9 | ≥ 150000 BTC | & | ≥ 11000 BNB | 0.0200% / 0.0400% | 0.0150% / 0.0300% | 0.0120% / 0.0240% |
In comparison to its main rivals, Coinmama charges quite high fees, with a 5.50% fee paid to Coinmama per transaction + an additional 5% fee on each credit and debit card transaction. It doesn’t end there as customers may be charged another fee by their bank, a Cash Advance fee depending on whether the financial institution views the transaction as a ‘cash’ transaction.
Overall, you might pay around 10% on the actual price of BTC or other crypto your want to buy if you do it via Coinmama.
Buying Limits
Binance introduced buying crypto with fiat last year, via their Binance Jersey daughter company. They use service called Simplex to execute these orders. Simplex charges 3.5 percent of a transaction with a $10 minimum (flat fee). The daily limit is $20,000 per user, while the monthly max is $50,000 per user.
There is no buying limit if you want to do crypto to crypto transactions. There is a withdrawal limit of 2 BTC for unverified accounts which gets lifted once you go through KYC procedure.
Coinmama offers high buying limits, that vary depending on your verification level and deposit method. Verified customers can buy up to $5,000 per day, with a maximum monthly limit of $30,000. Coinmama daily limit last for 24 hours from the moment that the limit is reached, while monthly limits is a moving sum of the previous 30 days.
V1 accounts can buy up to $5k per day with credit cards and $12k if you buy with bank transfer.
V2 accounts can buy up to $5k per day with CC and $30k for deposits with SEPA.
Verification level 3 can buy up to $7.5k per day with credit card and $30k for deposits with bank transfer.
Deposit and Withdrawal methods
Since Binance main platform is crypto only, you can do deposits in any of the 150+ supported coins. Same goes for withdrawals – you just need the address on blockchain of the coin you want to withdraw.
Coinmama has a very simple interface where it supports two deposit (and withdrawal methods): credit or debit card and bank transfers (SEPA).
Supported Countries
Binance does not specify which countries are supported and which countries are not supported but they did have couple of episodes of sudden blocks for traders from different countries around the world. As for the U.S traders, Binance made a separate platform, Binance US, to serve only US based traders and restricts them to use their main platform.
The only countries that Coinmama is not offering their services are sanctioned countries by the US government.
In addition, Coinmama is available in the following US states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.
Supported coins
Binance has one of the broadest offerings when it comes to supported cryptocurrencies. The number of coins keeps growing by week and it exceeds 150 coins at the time of this writing.
Coinmama built its reputation as one of the fastest and easiest ways to buy Bitcoin or Ethereum with a Credit or Debit card. In recent years, the exchange expanded its offering to add Litecoin, Cardano, QTUM, Ethereum Classic, Bitcoin Cash and Ripple’s XRP.
Customer Support
The customer service on Binance is also top-notch if you compare it with its peer exchanges. Worth noting, Binance provides customer support in 7 languages!
As of now there is no Binance support phone number, but they do have a customer support section where you can submit your requests. Usual turnaround time is around 24-hours. You can also use their live chat support option as shown here in the restricted operating hours. Apart from that, their FAQ section is quite detailed and if you go through it well, you may not really need to contact Binance support.
There is no phone support on Coinmama either as their customer support is available only via email. The website also features extensive list of FAQ’s. Most user queries are consistently replied within 24 hours (with longer waits expected over the weekend or public holidays). Coinmama’s stated business hours are Sunday to Thursday, from 11 pm to 7 am Pacific Time.
Trust and reputation
In its two short years of existence, Binance has gained a reputation for being fast and ferocious—sweeping aside peers on its rise to the top as one of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges by trading volume. Even though it is still unregulated (by any major finance authority aside of alleged regulation by Malta finance authorities), Binance enjoys very good reputation in crypto community thanks to their charismatic CEO CZ and his good communication and community management skills.
Although Coinmama is a relatively small exchange, they have yet to experience any known security breaches and are slowly but steadily building up their market share.
Coinmama is registered with FINCEN in the US as a money service business. Although the fact that Coinmama does not hold any cryptocurrency on users’ behalf makes it less susceptible to attacks than other exchanges, it still does hold records of users’ credit card information, although Coinmama states on its website that credit and debit card information is not stored on the exchange server.
Coinmama vs Binance: Security
Binance says it’s been awarded an information security accreditation after meeting standards set out by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). For the audits, Binance was examined on 114 criteria across 14 categories, including security policy, asset management, operational security and information systems.
Binance had an apparent leak of up to 60,000 users’ know-your-customer verification data, though it pointed a finger at a third-party service provider at the time. They also suffered a funds loss worth $40 million during a hack in May 2019. However, they had a separate fund for such cases and they refunded all users with the money from that fund.
Coinmama instantly sends your coins to your wallet so they are never held on their servers. This essentially removes them as a potential target for hackers. The only thing they store are customers’ credit card data but, as we mentioned above, they are stored separately and taken care with best practices in mind.
Other features
Binance is ferocious when it comes to expansion: they keep adding new features like margin trading, OTO options for traders and similar. They also keep stacking new services on top of their original exchange platform: staking, custody, lending, academy and education portal etc.
One of the most recent features Binance added to their platform is margin trading. After transferring BNB coins from your regular exchange wallet to your Margin Wallet, you will be able to use those coins as collateral to borrow funds. Your Margin Wallet balance determines the amount of funds you can borrow, following a fixed rate of 5:1 (5x). So if you have 1 BTC, you can borrow 4 more. In this example, we will borrow 0.02 BTC.
Interest fee on borrowed coins varies depending on your account level and type of coin you borrowed. Bitcoin has the lowest daily interest rate of 0.0075%, followed by ETH at 0.01% and XRP with 0.02%.
Coinmama has kind of stunted their own growth with their policy of just remaining the place to buy bitcoins and nothing else. The platform just buys and send your crypto for you, there is nothing else you can do on it.
Coinmama vs Binance: Pros and cons
Binance Pros
- Easy to Use
- Low Fees
- Good Support
- Lots of Listings
- Good Trading Interface
Binance Cons
- Doesn’t offer phone Support
Coinmama Pros
- does not store your credit card data on their servers
- it does not store your cryptocurrencies on their servers
- easy to use
- fast support
Coinmama Cons
- No trading options
- limited available coins
- no mobile app
Coinmama vs Binance: Conclusion
So who wins the battle between Binance and Coinmama?
- In terms of Coinmama fees vs Binance – Binance is cheaper (precisely Binance Jersey is cheaper, Coinmama has no trading fees as it offers no trading at all).
- In terms of supported currencies – also Binance with its hundreds of supported coins.
- In terms of regulatory compliance and licensing: Coinmama clearly holds an upper hand. Binance is completely opaque in their dealings and it is hard to even find out where are they incorporated.
- In terms of customer support: Both are of similar quality so it is a tie.
- When it comes to security in the Binance vs Coinmama battle: Coinmama is better as they never had any hacks and their modus operandi prevents any hacks in the future as well (since they never store coins on their servers), unlike Binance that suffered $40 robbery in May 2019.
- Trading features: Coinmama has none while Binance has one of the most advanced platforms for trading in the crypto world.
- Overall reputation: Binance is thousands of miles ahead in terms of brand presence and popularity but they are not without problems: unregulated status and murky workings around their initial exchange offerings (IEOs) tarnished their reputation among crypto purists.
If you are not fond of neither of these exchanges, here is a list of potential alternatives: Coinbase, Cex.io, Changelly, Bitpanda, Bitfinex, Kraken, Bittrex, Bitstamp.
In case you want to compare Cex.io or Coinmama with other exchanges, have a look at our guides where we do just that:
- Binance vs Coinbase
- Coinmama vs Coinbase
- Coinmama vs Cex.io
- Binance vs Kucoin
- Binance vs BitMex
- Binance vs Bittrex
- Binance vs Coinbase Pro
