LUNO is a cryptocurrency exchange which was founded in 2013, and its Heard Quarters located in London. With the popularity of Bitcoin and altcoins the LUNO Wallet has become the go to app. This is especially the case in South Africa and Nigeria.
They are planning on expanding to other several parts of the African continent including Zambia, and Uganda. To check a complete list of the supported countries click here. Another point worth noting is that you can use the LUNO wallet directly with your bank. You can buy Bitcoin using your bank account, no need for complicated third parties. However, this is only in supported countries.
If your country is not supported you may still use the LUNO wallet to store, send and receive cryptocurrency. They have also recently added Ripple in their selection of Cryptos on offer. At the time of writing this post LUNO supports 3 cryptocurrencies, namely: Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple.
Now let’s get into how you can go ahead and download and setup your LUNO wallet.
LUNO Wallet App Download – Step by Step
Step 1. Go to your AppStore or PlayStore by clicking on the respective image below.
Step 2. Download and Install the App.
This is how the LUNO wallet app looks like.
After running your app, you will a screen such at the one below. Just tap on Wallets and then you’ll be ready to start logging in.
Step 3 Login to Your Luno Wallet
Once you’ve downloaded the LUNO Wallet app you can go ahead and run the app then login. If you don’t have a LUNO account yet no worries, you can create one here. After you’ve created your account you want to go ahead and complete all your details by clicking on the link that they will send to your email. Login and complete your profile. For a step-by-step tutorial on how to create and verify your LUNO account you go here.
Step 4. Set Up Your Profile
If you are logging in for the first time you will want to setup your profile, secure your account and verifying your account. I have covered how to verify and secure your account in this post. To get started setting up your portfolio you will need to click on the far right corner. As shown below.
You want to make sure you go through each every setting above and actioning it. Securing your account is thee most important thing when it comes to crypto. You want to make sure you and ONLY you have access to your wallet and no one else. The other thing that will be required, however, are your documents for KYC (Know Your Customer) purposes. LUNO is required by law to verify that each member is who they say they are. As such, there’s limits put in place for levels of verification. If you just do the basic verification, which is just your name, surname, phone number and email then you may deposit and withdraw up to R15 000.
If you verify your ID, then your limits get lifted, now you are level 2 verified, with higher limits. The ultimate one is of course, proof of residence. Once you send in these documents and they get verified then you will be level 3 verified. On this level, there are not limits, only the sky. Below are some screenshots of your settings.
Step 5 Choose What You Want To Transact Next
There are a series of things that you can do. However, in order for you to send funds to someone you have to you have to buy a particular coin. For you to buy you have to to deposit funds first, fiat currency into your app. I do have a tutorial showing you how to deposit funds to your LUNO account. Check out the Tutorial below.
How to Make a Deposit Into Your LUNO Account
Even though the video above shows you how how to deposit funds into your LUNO account using your desktop, the process is the same on your app.
Step 6 How To Send Crypto
Now that you have funded and bought your crypto -whichever coin out of the selection. You might want to send it somewhere or to someone. All you do is click on “send”, then follow the on screen options. See the screenshots below.
In this example we chose to send Bitcoin.
The following screen will just ask you to put some text in. You don’t have to. You can just click on Next.
The rest after this screen is just to confirm that you indeed want to send that amount of Bitcoin (can be any coin), and will show you your available Bitcoin. Then just hit confirm. And you are done. After a few seconds you will receive a notification on your LUNO Wallet app informing you that you have sent a certain amount to a particular address, as per your instructions.
How To Receive Bitcoin Into Your LUNO Wallet
Now let’s say your friend wants to send you Bitcoin or any other supported cryptocurrency. They would require your Bitcoin address, if they are sending you Bitcoin. As the word suggests, you are going to click on “Receive” because you are the recipient of funds in this case. Follow the simple process outlined below.
You will always be presented with a list of coins from which you will get to choose the one you are receiving. Take Note: If you are receiving funds for the fist time on any particular coin, you will be required to create the wallet address. So when you see “Create Address, go ahead and click on it, then you will see “Create Label”. This just means you can use any name. You can name this label anything you want. Your nickname, your family member’s name, pet name etc.
Once you have copied the Bitcoin/Ethereum/Ripple/Bitcoin Cash address then you can send it to your friend who will then send the said cryptocurrency to your LUNO wallet. What’s really important to remember is to use the right address for the crypto you are intending to send or to receive. If for example, you send Ripple to an Ethereum Address your money will be lost, forever. Often times people do this through sheer rush and negligence. Perhaps we can say this is one of the disadvantages of crypto. If you send funds to a wrong address, or recipient, you can’t retrieve it. So you want to be cautious and pay attention, always.
How to Sell Bitcoin On Your LUNO Wallet App (Or Any Other Cryptocurrency)
Let’s now you’ve received some Bitcoin into your LUNO wallet and would like to liquidate it for cash. This is the easy process then. All you need to do is click on Sell. The following video basically shows you how the entire step, selling and withdrawing cash into your bank account. But we will cover the step-by-step walkthrough through screenshots as well.
Now let’s take a look at the step-by-step walkthrough to make sure you understand the process fully. Follow on below.
You will then be presented with a series of cryptos to choose from. Then you will pick Bitcoin, as in our example.
The next is just to choose how much of it you want to sell. If you’d like to sell all of it you can just easily tap on “Max” at the right side of the box, or type in the amount you want manually. After this action then all you do is confirm, as they will show you a quote and sell price. Then it’s just confirmation from there.
Once you’ve done this you will get a confirmation that the operation was successful. Something to take note of here though is that, if you take too much time without confirming your order will expire. Remember this is a quote from LUNO based on the current price of Bitcoin or whatever coin you’ll be selling. So if this happens, you will just have to start the process over. The system will just tell you your order or quote has expired. The reason they do this is because is very volatile anything can happen within 2 minutes. So in the event that this happens you just have to start over. You don’t have to rush the process/confirmation, but you also shouldn’t take a century just to hit the confirm button.
How to Withdraw Your Funds from LUNO into Your Bank Account
Now you have sold your crypto and now what do you do next? . All you have to do here is to to click a few buttons, put in your account details and then leave the rest to the system. You must just make sure you choose the correct bank, and enter the correct account details so they can send your money to your bank account.
You want to click on your Fiat Currency that you have converted into. In my case it’s ZAR, because I’m based in South Africa. And then you will see the option to withdraw on the next screen. Just tap on Withdraw.
You will now see options such as how much you want to withdraw and which bank you are withdrawing to. It is at this stage that you will be required to put in your bank details.
As I mentioned earlier, if this is your first time. All you have to do is click on Add bank beneficiary. Then you’ll be able to choose the bank you bank with, your account and confirm as such. Once you have put in your bank details. Then you are ready to more on to the next step. Put in the amount you would like to withdraw and click next. The next screen will prompt you to add an additional note. You can if you want, just to identify where the funds came from. Even though this is completely optional, you don’t have to. You will know where the money came from as they also you an email notification both upon withdrawal and and when the withdrawal is complete. Click Next.
The next screen you want to confirm that you indeed would like to withdraw the said amount. So they will show you the amount you are withdrawing, the bank account you are withdrawing to plus chargeable fees.
If you had selected Max, instead of typing in a smaller amount on the previous screen. You will see a message at the bottom about insufficient funds. This is because you selected Max, and the Max doesn’t include fees. But you don’t worry about it as they are just informing you that will send you the entire amount less the withdrawal fees. The withdrawal fee at the time of writing this post is R8.50, as shown above. The withdrawal fee doesn’t change, no matter how much you withdraw. You will only be charged R8.50, or equivalent based on your country fiat currency.
Again, once you hit confirm you will see Mission Success. Now all you do from here is wait. Well done.
SUMMARY
We’ve come to the end of our LUNO Wallet app tutorial. In this section I will cover some things you need to know regarding LUNO which you might not necessarily be aware of. Take note of the following.
- Depositing funds may take to a day or two to reflect in your LUNO account. So don’t be alarmed if you don’t see anything right away after depositing your funds.
- There are withdrawal cutoff times. Please check this schedule to make sure you are within the specified timeframe in order to receive your funds sooner.
- You can use the LUNO Wallet even if your country is not supported to transact cryptocurrency. In this case you will just use it to send and or receive crypto. Even switching from one crypto to the next.
- In case of any inquiries you can email them on support@luno.com. Their response time is pretty decent.
- They have 3 levels of verification, of which each unlocks a bigger amount to deposit and/or withdraw. You can see how to verify your account in this post.
If you liked this post please share it with your friends, they might find it helpful as well. Do let me know your thoughts below.