How to Buy Monero Using LocalMonero

This guide will walk you through the process of buying Monero (XMR) from LocalMonero. There is already a guide on the LocalMonero website. However, this how-to provides in-depth step-by-step instructions on how to make a purchase.

LocalMonero is great because you can anonymously purchase Monero. LocalMonero transactions are usually done in person, making a cash deposit at an ATM, or employing one of the many other payment methods available.

You may be wondering, how can we be sure that the seller doesn’t just scam the buyer? Well, LocalMonero acts as an escrow service. This means that the Monero you are buying from the seller is actually held by LocalMonero, and will only be disbursed after all the conditions between the buyer and the seller are settled. If anything goes wrong, you can open a dispute, and LocalMonero will step in to sort out the issue. Also the guys that run the LocalMonero service are active within the Monero subreddit and appear to be genuine guys going above and beyond to help others.

The only real downside to LocalMonero is it is usually a little more expensive than buying Monero from an exchange, but, you are buying it with enhanced anonymity. If you want to buy Monero as cheaply as possible see one of our other guides on here.

Step 1.

Go to LocalMonero. You will end up on the LocalMonero homepage. Avoid any potential phishing attacks in which you end up on a fake website by making sure the website address is correct (https://localmonero.co).

The first thing we need to do is sign up so click on the big green button SIGN UP FREE.

Step 2.

Now we need to enter in our user information. First enter in your username.

Type in your email address if you are happy to do so. This is optional, so if you require a high level of privacy you can leave your email address out, but if you forget your password then you can’t recover it. If you can’t risk forgetting your password you can just use a throwaway email address.

Next type in your password twice, then click the terms of service toggle.

Double check everything is correct and then click the big green REGISTER button and wait for the page to load. If everything was successful you will see the Registration success! page.

Good, it’s now time to log in.

Step 3.

Click the blue LOG IN button in the upper right hand corner of the page. Type in your username and password. Ignore the one-time password as we haven’t enabled it.

Click LOG IN.

Step 4.

Ok now you will be logged in and the LocalMonero homepage will be a little bit different looking. Now, we’re ready to buy some Monero. In my opinion, the two best ways to go about is to either buy your Monero with your local fiat currency (e.g. USD, EUR, GBP, AUD, etc.) or Bitcoin.

For this guide, we will assume that you do not own any Bitcoin, and want to somewhat anonymously buy Monero using your local fiat currency.

The first thing to do is select your local currency. I am Australian so I will choose AUD.

Next I will choose my country so I have selected Australia.

And finally, I will leave the payment type as All online offers. I can choose a specific payment type such as bank transfer, cash, or paypal, but at this point i’m not sure what’s available in my local area, so I will do a broad search in order to keep open all my possible methods of purchasing Monero.

If it all looks good, now we will click the big blue SEARCH button.

Step 5.

The search results will now appear on the newly loaded page. At the moment we need to scroll down to view the Monero for sale listings. Now I’ve scrolled down I can see all the listings available. There don’t appear to be a whole lot of users selling Monero in Australia at the moment. On the left, we can see the seller’s name along with an eBay style seller rating. This is important to check as we want to buy off someone who is reputable, and is going to conduct business quickly. In the above image we can see that seller FGWtrading has made 4 transactions and has a 100% rating. I’d suggest only dealing with sellers who have 100% ratings. After that we can see the payment methods the seller accepts. FGWtrading accepts cash deposit at a variety of different Bank’s ATMs and branches. The third thing we need to look at is the price per XMR. The cheapest is listed first. FGWtrading is selling Monero for $439.13AUD per XMR. This is cheaper than all the other sellers listed. Finally, we need to look at the Limits. This is the amount of dollars per transaction we can make with the seller. In my case here, FGWtrading will sell anywhere from $0 to $753.93AUD worth of Monero per transaction. This is ok for me as I do not want to buy a large amount, however if I wanted to buy over $1000AUD worth, then the only two sellers offering limits over $1000 are Mrcoins and Blue, and it may be most convenient to buy from them.

Great. So now I’ve looked at all the sellers ratings, their payment methods, their price per XMR, and their limits of how much I can buy, I need to decide who to buy from.

I only want to buy $50 worth of XMR, so I must buy from either FGWtrading, Mrcoins, or moneroTraders because the other two sellers have higher limits. Out of those three, FGWtrading has a lower number of ratings compared to Mrcoins and moneroTraders, however FGWtrading is considerably cheaper and still has a 100% rating so I will go with them. I will choose to buy from FGWtrading now and click the orange BUY button next to their listing. Obviously, right now you will be buying your Monero from a different vendor, so use my advice above to choose a good seller that suits your needs, and click their BUY button.

Step 6.

Now, the seller’s page will load up. In the top left section, we can see the seller’s information like on the previous page. In my case, you will see that the price has slightly increased to $444.82AUD. This is because like all cryptocurrencies, Monero’s price is highly volatile and a 5% swing in price within 15mins is not unusual. Now you need to double check the seller’s Terms of trade on the right hand side of the screen. Check that you are happy to pay using their method.

In my case here, I will have to deposit the cash in at an ATM using the seller’s account details which is OK with me.

Your payment method may be different here, so again, just make sure it is something you are happy doing. If you’re unsure about any of this, just contact the seller and ask them to clarify the payment method.

Once you have checked the seller’s Terms of trade, and understand how you are making the payment, and are ok with everything, type in the amount of XMR you want to buy. I want to buy $50AUD worth of Monero so I just typed in 50. It automatically loads up how much Monero you will receive from that seller.

This all looks good to me, so I will now click the big green button that says SEND TRADE REQUEST.

Step 7.

Now a new page will load up detailing the transaction. Again, I can see that the amounts have changed due to the volatility in price. I should have been quicker and I would have gotten a little more XMR! Anyway, it doesn’t really matter, I just need my Monero ASAP!

First off, I need to adhere to the seller’s Terms of trade that I read on the previous screen, and message them to obtain their banking details so I can make the correct payment. Remember, you should also contact the seller to confirm payment method and details prior to making payment! Type your message in the box if you need to contact the seller and click the big blue SEND MESSAGE button. Once it has sent you will see a record of your sent message in a chat box just below where you typed it in.

Now I have to wait for the seller to reply and give me their banking details so I can make the payment. I have no idea how long it will take for the seller to respond. It might even take up to 24 hours! In the meantime I’m just going to drink a beer and head over to reddit.com/r/moonero for a few laughs.

Side note: If the seller isn’t responding, you can always cancel the trade and make another order with a different seller. Just remember, do not cancel a trade if you have already paid the seller!

Step 8.

Finally the seller replied and sent me their banking details and I made the payment. Remember, your seller may accept different payment methods, so this part may be a little different for you if you are paying with cash in person, or are bank transferring the money to them.

Now we’ve paid, we need to confirm this on LocalMonero.

Make sure you’re back on the transaction page again. You might have to log back in to LocalMonero. Log back in, and click the three lines in the top left corner to open the left sidebar menu.

And then click on Dashboard. Easy! Now you will see your Dashboard. To return to the open trade, just click on the orange VIEW button. Scroll down to where it says Step two: confirm the payment. Now that we’ve paid, click the big blue I HAVE PAID button. Now we have to confirm the payment. Click CONFIRM PAYMENT COMPLETE. Easy! Now we just wait for confirmation from the seller! Time to grab another beer and relax until it is cleared.

If you haven’t paid in person using cash, then you are going to have to wait for the traditional banking system to forward your payment to the seller. This is usually between 1 to 3 business days depending on which country you are in, so sit tight and wait patiently for the seller to confirm they’ve received the money. If this is the case just log back in later and check the status of the trade.

Step 9.

Ok, so it’s been two days and I think the bank transfer will have cleared by now. When you think the payment has been received, go back to LocalMonero and log back in to your account. Once you’re logged back in, check up in the upper right hand corner to see if you have any new notifcations (the notification icon is the little orange speech bubble with the number inside it) or your XMR balance has changed. Well fancy that! I’ve got a new notification, and it appears that I have received my Monero!

What we’re going to do now is check the notification by simply clicking on the orange speech box. Let it load up. You will now see all your notifications. You can see that I’ve highlighted my completed trade in the blue box. It should have a tick and say completed. Great! Let’s now click on the completed notification. Put your mouse over the completed notificaiton, wait for it to highlight itself, and click on it.

Once you’ve clicked it, the trade page will load up again. You will see on the right side of the page it will say Completed and have a big green circle with a tick in it.

Now let’s scroll down the page a little to see if there’s anything else new. If you want to, you can view and print a receipt of this transaction. This may be handy for future tax purposes. We now also have to leave feedback for the seller. Choose the feedback you wish to give (positive, neutral or negative), and just like on eBay or Amazon type them a feedback message so that potential future buyers can refer to it, then click the big blue box LEAVE FEEDBACK.

The same page will reload itself with the updated feedback.

Step 10.

After the trade page has reloaded itself, click on your XMR balance in the top right corner. Your LocalMonero wallet will now load up in a new page. My Monero is there! Hooray :-)

It says I can send my entire balance of 0.112359550562 XMR.

We do not ever want to leave our Monero in a wallet controlled by a third party such as an exchange. If the exchange is hacked or decide to shut up shop and run off with our Monero then we would lose all our XMR.

So, because I don’t want anyone else holding onto my Monero for me, I want to withdraw all my XMR into my personal Monero wallet. Wallets I recommend to use are the Monero GUI wallet with a remote node, a paper wallet, the Monerujo wallet from the Google Play Store, or the Cake wallet from the Apple App Store. The MyMonero webwallet is really easy to use, but is more susceptible to phishing attacks so I wouldn’t recommend using it.

Side note: You can also send your XMR directly to someone else if you want to, just type in their receiving address instead. DO NOT SEND YOUR MONERO TO A WALLET REQUIRING A PAYMENT ID! If you need to, send it to your own wallet first, and then send it out from your own wallet that supports payment IDs. Payment IDs is an older feature replaced by Integrated Addresses, but not everyone has adopted integrated addresses yet.

What we are going to do is copy and paste our personal Monero wallet address (or whichever address we want our Monero to go) into where is says Receiving Monero address. Triple check that you got the address correct. An easy way to do this is ensure the first few characters are correct, and the last few characters are correct, and then just cross check the middle ones the best you can.

Now we have to decide how much to send, and choose the transaction fee we want to pay. If you want to send all your Monero, instead of typing the amount in the Send amount in Monero section, just click the blue text below that says ALL AVAILABLE BALANCE to save yourself some time.

After that we need to Select transaction priority. I highly recommend you choose the Low fee. This will save you money, and typically your transaction will still make it into the next block without paying the standard fee. In my opinion only choose Standard if you require urgency, however at the time of writing, paying the standard fee will not be any quicker than paying the low fee. Standard will only be quicker if there are a lot of transactions awaiting confirmation in the blockchain.

Expect your transaction to take roughly 20mins.

At the bottom you will see Receive amount in Monero. This is the amount you will receive in the wallet you are sending the XMR to. It is the send amount minus the transaction fee.

Check your receiving address is correct one last time and if you are happy with everything, then click the big blue CONTINUE button. The Confirm withdrawal box will appear. Check the address is correct, and the send amount and fee are right.

Once you’re happy, type in your password and click SEND MONERO. You will now see the success box appear!

Woohoo!!!! SUCCESS!!!

Click BACK. You will now see your wallet page reloaded.

Your balance will change. You can see above my balance is now 0.000257862500 XMR.

Don’t worry about any residual left over Monero. For me, it’s only about 5 cents worth and not even enough to cover a transaction fee.

Step 11.

Go to whichever personal Monero wallet you are using and check your balance. Remember give it about 20mins and it should be in there.

That’s it!

Conclusion

You have now successfully purchased XMR using LocalMonero. How easy was that!

To recap everything you did - you signed up, chose a seller, communicated with them, made payment, received your XMR in your LocalMonero wallet, left the seller feedback, and then withdrew your XMR to your personal Monero wallet.


John's beer money:
49qCTmnYX3XAMKktrjmZrGEkntqh44Ph2VSk6ArfSFpFVhCQVZFR1ZGX15T7NxeBYD9aYtFVtVFjZFC527bZcUwzJxxmEcg