How to Buy Bitcoin in Sri Lanka

If you are a Sri Lankan, you may find most of popular bitcoin exchanges do not allow to buy bitcoin for Sri Lankans. Bitcoin exchanges such as Coinbase, Kraken, GDAX, Bitfinex do not offers their services to Sri Lanka. In the other hand, some bitcoin exchanges do not offer flexible payment methods to deposit LKR or fiat currency to buy bitcoin. Most of such exchanges offer international bank wire transfer as their deposit method. I know that most of Sri Lankans want to use the most easiest payment methods such as local bank transfers, paypal to buy bitcoin or ethereum instead of these lengthy and time consuming deposit methods.

There are several bitcoin exchanges that offer easier payment methods to Sri Lankans to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrency. I would like to list those bitcoin exchanges.

1. Binance

Binance is the most popular cryptocurrency exchange in the world. Sri Lankans can buy bitcoin using P2P service available in Binance using local bank transfer. In this method, you are directly dealing with one of Sri Lankan bitcoin sellers registered with Binance. Binance acts as the intermediary for the transaction. You will be able to see a list of sellers, their exchange rate per bitcoin as well as completion rate. It is highly recommended to deal with a seller who has sufficient number of previous trades with a higher completion rate. Sometimes, sellers with lower exchange rate with very few or no previous trades could be scammers and you have to be aware of them. Apart from BTC, you can find sellers who sell USDT for LKR there.

If you use the payment currency as USD, you may also find sellers who accept other payment methods such as Skrill. These sellers may not be Sri Lankans and you to follow the instructions I mentioned above with them too because there are scammers in other countries as well.

Join Binance

2. CEX.io

CEX.io is a popular bitcoin exchange where you can buy bitcoin using your Skrill account. If you don't have a Skrill account, you have to open a Skrill account and fund it first in order to pay using Skrill. Although you can't fund your Skrill account using a credit or debit card, you can find local sellers. But be aware of the risk of getting scammed and take all the necessary precautions before doing a deal with such a seller. Other than bitcoin, you can buy altcoins such as ethereum, bitcoin cash, dash, stellar at CEX

Join CEX.io

3. LocalBitcoins

LocalBitcoins is a site where you can find local bitcoin sellers which means you can find sellers who accept LKR through local bank transfer and cash deposit. If you cannot trust a seller, there are sellers who are willing arrange a meetup and do the transaction. 

Other than payments in LKR, you can also find sellers who accept Paypal, Payoneer, Skrill, Neteller payments in USD or EUR. However, sellers who accept paypal or payoneer payments may not be Sri Lankan sellers. Therefore, you can find bitcoin sellers with variety of payment methods in LocalBitcoins. However, LocalBitcoins act as the middleman for the transaction and doesn't offer a guarantee about the seller. Therefore, it is strongly recommended to choose a seller with almost 100% positive feedback to buy bitcoin.

3. Pauxful

Pauxful is another website similar to LocalBitcoins. There are sellers who accept variety of payment methods including Paypal, Payoneer, Skrill and Neteller. Always check the seller's positive feedback/ratings before buy bitcoins as you need to buy your bitcoin from trusted seller.

If you are a Sri Lankan, I hope above list will help you to buy bitcoin. Keep in mind that cryptocurrency exchanges such as Binance and CEX requires identity verification before start buying bitcoin.