Reading an Onramp Fee Schedule Without Missing Anything

A fee schedule is a document designed to be accurate rather than clear. Six charges matter and they are rarely on one page.

Deposit fee

What it costs to put money in, by method. Often zero for a bank transfer and one to three per cent for a card.

Check whether it is charged on the deposit or deducted from it, because the two produce different amounts available to trade.

Trading fee

Charged per transaction, usually as a percentage and frequently tiered by thirty day volume. Retail buyers sit in the top tier and pay the top rate.

Maker and taker rates differ. The instant-buy path is always the taker rate or worse.

Spread

Rarely in the schedule at all. It appears as a sentence saying prices may include a margin.

This is the charge most likely to be the largest, and the only way to size it is to compare a live quote against the order book. Collect & Exchange, which quotes the conversion separately is unusual in making that arithmetic visible.

Withdrawal fee

Per asset and per network, usually a flat amount. The same asset on two networks frequently carries fees that differ by an order of magnitude.

Check this before buying rather than after, because the choice of network is often made at purchase.

Conversion fee

Applies when the deposit currency is not the quote currency. A euro deposit buying a dollar-quoted pair crosses a currency conversion that has its own margin.

This is where a cheap-looking venue can become expensive for anyone not funding in its base currency.

Inactivity and maintenance charges

Uncommon but not extinct. Worth a search of the terms for the word inactivity before leaving a balance for a year.

The two questions a schedule rarely answers

Whether the quoted rate holds for the whole amount, and what happens to the fee if the transaction partially fills. An onramp with the fee shown before confirmation answers both on the confirmation screen, which is where the answer is useful.

The practical test

Price the same hundred dollar purchase at two venues using every charge above, then compare the amount of asset that would arrive in your own wallet. That single number settles it, and it is the only comparison that includes a regulated venue for the first purchase on the same terms as everyone else.