Does Shakepay charge any fees?
Shakepay is a commission-free service. This means we do not charge a commission for buying or selling crypto.
Shakepay also covers transaction fees for moving your money off platform (say, to a bitcoin address).
This is a pretty awesome perk for our customers! Most platforms will charge you fees or a commission to buy, sell or move out your cryptos. These fees can quickly add up and it’s all on you to pay them. With Shakepay, there are no surprise hidden fees—what you see is what you get. And what you get is more cryptos in your pocket!
If Shakepay does not charge a commission, how do we make money?
Shakepay is not a marketplace where customers buy and sell with other customers. We're more like a local retail store that buys and sells goods.
We offer digital currencies (bitcoin or ethereum) for sale directly to our customers. When a customer buys bitcoin on Shakepay, we’re selling them the bitcoin ourselves. Similarly, when a customer sells their bitcoin, we buy them from the customer.
To make money, we set the price you can buy or sell digital currencies on Shakepay.
At any point in time, there will be a small difference between the price customers can buy crypto and the price at which they can sell.
Shakepay will capture this difference as revenue to cover our costs as a business, maintain our platform, and offer great service to customers.
How do we set the price?
When customers want to buy or sell crypto, our platform’s algorithm will obtain current prices for the crypto from our liquidity providers, after which we will incorporate a spread to compensate Shakepay, and will present a price to the customer at which we are willing to buy or sell the crypto. If the customer finds the price agreeable, they will confirm that they wish to proceed and the customer’s market order at the quoted price will be filled on the platform. The price will be refreshed based on new pricing obtained from a liquidity provider every 30 seconds.
Where can I find the buy and sell price?
The buy and sell prices can be found on the Buy & sell screen on the Shakepay app. To toggle between buying and selling, just change the ‘From’ currency between dollars and bitcoin.
Why is there a difference between the CAD amount I paid to buy crypto and the CAD equivalent shown on the main screen?
When you go on the Buy & sell page and want to buy crypto, we are displaying our buying price at the moment. Once you've bought your crypto, the CAD equivalent is displayed on the main page will most likely be less than the CAD amount you just paid for your crypto. The reason is because the CAD equivalent of your crypto displayed on the main page is calculated using the average of our buying and selling prices. This is a convenient way for you to know approximately your crypto's worth in CAD.
When you buy or sell crypto from or to Shakepay, you don’t buy or sell using the average of our buying and selling prices, but with the actual price Shakepay is buying or selling its crypto at the moment, as indicated in the Buy & sell page.
Related articles: