Bitcoin Forum

There are many online wallets like Xapo and Coinbase that do not charge any transaction fees or they pay that fees by themselves. I want to know that how would they profit from paying for their user's transaction fees ?
If no fees is charged then the transaction take a much long time or even might get cancelled !

Maybe they profit on ads? Or paid services...

only by advertisement
a wallet like blockchain.info has two big ads on the bottom of the searches. and also a lot of small ads linking to sites like purse.io in the wallet page.

Well Xapo charges a 1% fee every time you buy Bitcoins and also the processing fees may depend on the payment method. Coinbase on the other hand charges 1% when you convert from Bitcoin to your local currency and vice versa. And for example Coinkite has advanced wallets targeted to businessmen and merchants that offer more features than the free basic wallets. In general every online wallet has a fee system and also charges more for upgraded plans if you need more flexibility for your business.

I think that other way to earn is a commission (or a custom price USD / BTC) and some "partnership" with big customers that could start from 0 with btc and these service give a "key on hand" / full to start, packet for who doesn't know anything related to this "world".

Obviously the "navigated" user will prefer a "classic" wallet ;)

Most of them by taking fees or by providing other services (other then storing your bitcoin in their wallet) , Blockchain in the other have ads as you can see when you login . (BTCJam , Purse.io etc ..)

blockchain.info already charge over transc but i think Xapo and coinbase have their profit over their credit cards because those cards and somehow overpriced to use

Are you sure about that ? I mean aren't we supposed to see if they take anything in the transaction ID ? because I never see anything except the usual network fees .

If you keep your money in Bank account then it is normal that Banks are using your money and conducting all kinds or manipulation with it.
They use it to invest, use it to finance their loans business. With bitcoin wallet you can't really  touch money of users, because it will shot on blockchain.
I guess the only way is to have other services beside wallet available and ads on their site.

I think their income is from ads, I agree with people here. Ads on online wallet must be very expensive imo, because many people will see it when open their wallet.

Online wallets are mostly preferred by people doing many transactions in a day... Becuase they are mobile and easy to use....

ANd in Bitcoin world , there are a whole lot of such people so yes easily..

The fees on the Xapo pre-paid card are quite hefty. Don't know what it's like on the Coinbase card, but I imagine they charge. Plus Coinbase is linked to the Coinbase exchange, and they make money there through trading fees.

Exchanges like coinbase make money from the buy, sell, and exchange fees.  They can offer no fee transactions because of this.

Besides exchange fees, I think they charge you a fee if you are registered as a company using their services in your business transactions.

I think some online wallets earn money from open source projects and ads..
Android bitcoin wallet earns money from donations... blockchain.info earns from funds...


Posted From bitcointalk.org Android App

online wallets are for suckers.

I think they are survive because they are can accept to buy bitcoin to their website like on coinbase you can buy bitcoin there using your bank account also in xapo they are offering debit card that can deposit money to buy bitcoins.. 10k satoshi is not high to pay for the fee for every transaction..

True that. Maybe its just bait to get them suckers in.

And they also pool transactions, since they don't provide you private keys, they pool all the transactions made in a while and send them together.

Blockchain.info does charge a fee for each transaction.The income from ads is additional for them and given the cost of running a wallet,I think it is fair they charge a fee

because of bitcoin online wallets are able to survive. i predict that when bitcoin dies out that the wallets will go to as they depend on the internet currency

You have incorrect information .Online Wallets charge users for every transaction they make.You can't even set a custom transaction fees unlike core in most of the cases .Maybe you never noticed because the amount is next to negligible which won't bother you.Online Wallets don't pay your transaction fees,you do.They charge you more than Core by providing an assurity to have your transactions confirmed on High/Medium priority.

Xapo and Coinbase are also exchanges, and they provide other services as debit cards.

Free transactions only between their users, if you send to outside their system you will pay a fee.

Wallets like Blockchain.info rely on publicity, and you are the one setting the fee, you have full control.

Ones like blockchain.info make money from ads though it wouldn't surprise me if they start charging fees at some point in the future. They've had big investments from companies so they'll probably start wanting to see their money back at some point and its got to come from somewhere.

These usually take the fee and subtract it from the transaction value at least blockchain.info does that, If a wallet doesn't then I think it's suspicious even in itself, Since they all pay fees to the network to complete the transaction and are supposedly not using your funds in some investments or projects.

The companies running web wallets charge fees when converting from Bitcoin to local currencies and for premium accounts with more features. Some of them offer Bitcoin debit cards which net them even more profit in fees tied to the cards.

They survive just the same way companies offering free email services. Their idea is to have a large audience interested in a precise subject. When you have that, you'll see opportunities to monetize your website, by selling services or acting like exchanges. I don't think companies behind online wallets are making big money right now, but they have a future, as less and less people will download the whole blockchain, which is getting too big.

Those who do not charge transaction fees, they mainly earn from the advertising revenue and also from the bitcoin exchange. Good amount of traffic can turn in to a very very good income.

If you want to buy bitcoin using xapo or coinbase, you will have to pay a currency exchange fees. That goes to their income.

There might also be a hidden agenda behind this, as we have seen with other companies coming into this environment and supporting Bitcoin and once they acquired enough users they shift to a fiat based business model and only supporting Bitcoin as a hidden feature. The free or cheap fees are funded by the secondary features on the exchange or extra services side. You get cross subsidizing from one service to another, and remember the Blockchain transactions are only done, once you go on-chain and then a trasaction fee are charged. ^hmmmmm^

Advertisements and fees, Coinbase for example I know they have a lot of merchants setup and I am pretty sure they would be getting some kind of fees from them and also when bitcoin is traded they would receive a % in fees.

they pay small fee from small transaction,each wallet have standard transaction big and small,and i'm sure if people sent big amount of transaction,then wallet will take some fee from that user. and for coinbase,they will stay alive becuase they have exchange,they got profit from it. just my opinion.

if Blockchain.info may receive from the transaction fees.
as if from an ad, I didn't see any ads on this website and there are some wallet also received through donations from users.

Actually I believe you are incorrect.
I will give you as example my wallet on Bit-X. The current amount shown is completely unrelated to what I actually have there. But also when I withdraw, I don't actually know from which wallets they will actually send me my money.
Conclusions:
* online wallets can and will use your money for they needs as long as you keep money there.
* online wallets can and will optimize withdraws whenever possible to reduce as much as possible the fees they pay


So if they hire a few professional traders, they have your/our money to play with and there can be an awesome revenue, where the ads and such are only extra pennies.
And it's only one example that came into my mind.

From what i remember they have fee to send bitcoin outside internal wallet addresses. I mean they dont take fee to send internal xapo to xapo or coinbase to coinbase address that mean they associate bitcoin address to you but keep record of your balance in database ratger than in real bitcoin address. So they dont have to pay fee for evvery internal transaction.

Yes as far as I know they don't charge fees for that, they get their profits from trades, meaning USD to BTC and vice versa. You should be more curious how bitcoin 'savings' wallets like Magnr and HaoBTC stay up and profit from their business models, I mean considering this difficulty we're at.

@Neurotic Fish But Bit-X is an exchange right? Their Bitcoin capital is constantly in circulation between the users as they are trading on the platform so it's normal for them to assign coins to you which weren't deposited by you initially when you are trying to withdraw later. While on simple Bitcoin wallets this shouldn't be happening theoretically because your funds aren't being used for investments behind the scenes like banks do. I may be incorrect in my reasoning though.

i'm also using coinbase,but i dont see they take any fee from my wallet,when i just sent all bitcoin from my wallet,it just go through all in,and my balance become zero,so how they take fee?

They're in the business of attracting customers right now. How much does it cost them in fees. A few hundred dollars a week or month? Worth it to earn loyalty.

Few of the online web wallets have PAID MERCHANT/API SERVICE .
They might earn from that.
Block.io api has limit and a fee is applied above it.

Huge traffic = ad rev

The more popular pure online wallet services live or die based on ad revenue

Then of course you have providers like xapo, coinbase etc that generate revenue via transaction fees and the like

Same thing goes with gourl where they offer api 'free' service. They profit from transaction fees upon withdrawing from your wallet.

Hardware wallets are better

Ads and fees.

Blockchain.info has two relatively large advertisements at the bottom of their page, which based on the traffic of the site, will earn them a hefty sum.

Coinbase and xapo charge fiat-btc fees. Lots of people buy/sell with them for the sake of simplicity.

Try Spectrocoin. They have 0% loading fees and extremely low transaction fees. They have a giveaway active currently, just check on service announcements. Cryptopay is also offering the same service with a giveaway too, but not with fees as low as Spectrocoin's.

Online wallet = a gamble about your money not being lost in a "hack" (inside job) or the company legitimately going backup or actually hacked/robbed. Their business is buying your trust with promises of your Bitcoins safe, and they make money with withdraw and deposit fees and ad revenue from the traffic, simple as that.

Most of the online wallets (like coinbase, circle, etc.,) having their own exchanges and they'll have some fees. OR if  wallet doesn't have its own exchange (blockchain.info) there will be some ads on that website. I think this is the way that they're live (?).

I think the nearest answer is on our every transaction out , also it my country it is manage by a company so they have amount intended every cash in or cash out they have a corresponding earning. And lastly i think they also earned when we are visiting their  online web wallets.

i wonder if these wallets also offer debits cards ? I am also shopping around for a god debit card at the moment because I also want to find an easier way of withdrawing bitcoins eventually rather than using the exchanges all the time and trying always to move money around. Which one do you you recommend is the best?

I think you can try Spectrocoin. It's online wallet and they offers debit cards. Now they have giveaway of virtual debit cards https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1037139.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1037139.0)

Both Xapo and Coinbase are not just online wallets (which cover the transaction fee), they also have the exchange section on their website, so coinbase charge 1% on exchange. Xapo has their own bitcoin debit card and they also charge fees to use their card.

yeah blockchain gets income from advertisement and course fees as well. Coinbase have a business selling / buying bitcoin they earn a living from it

Too many reasons why online wallets still survives for a long period of time.One of the reasons why is because of their domain,its security isproctected,protected from DDOS attack files theif and others.And they have good security checkers and good developers who is professional.One more thing is their site is nit vulnurable for any hacking cause of security

I believe, they earn their profit from the paid service. Because Bitcoin transaction suppose to have a low fee, so they won't higher the fee because the customer won't like it.

Can't speak for others but at HaoBTC, about 90% of the revenue comes from mining; 10% from trading. One advantage is that we are based in China; compared with US and Europe, labour cost is considerably lower so the pressure to turn a profit is lower too

Maybe they have some kind of agreement or MOU with companies like blockchain. For xapo I think they get benefit from advertising and Coinbase they get benefit from exchange fees. thank you

I think they survive cause the gain profit in buying and selling bitcoins. and The ads and capatchas in their site make them survive through out the bitcoin wallet list

They probably use your coins, convert to fiat and involved in legitimate investments?

Yea, I just noticed the ads. I think that's how they make profit.

that is what banks do with fiat, it is different with a bitcoin wallet especially wallets like blockchain.info that they have no access to your coins.
although some other wallets like coinbase or xapo which have this access may do this but since coinbase is also an exchanger (with fees) they are also a business themselves.

Indeed the blockchain is as a example doing it with advertisements and I think they will earn a pretty nice amount because a lot of people are using the blockchain wallet.

No I don't think they operate similarly to banks mate  :D Some of the Bitcoin wallets offer premium features which are paid and other have sponsors who are paying the wallet sites to display advertisements. And they can also charge fees when converting and withdrawing Bitcoins from your account mostly on the Bitcoin exchanges. Their business must be profitable otherwise they wouldn't have been operating at a loss for so long.

They make a profit from buying and selling Bitcoin like coins.ph I think there  is much bigger doing this instead of offering high fee and with so many people selling and buying bitcoin in their network imagine their huge profit..

I'm sure bitcoin online wallet are is not small company,they have good marketing plan and have great profit management,i think they earn profit from transaction fee,not witdraw fee,its why they have bitcoin exchange and market,and also they join with some others company to advertise and promotion.

I think thats coin doesn't no fee for every transaction because they have a market place or trading place.. also maybe they own miners instead confirming from other miner their own miner will confirm and accept miners fee.. this is just my thoughts.. maybe there's other reason.. for xapo maybe they are get many visitors from their many faucet thats why  the fee for every transaction is free..

I sometimes wonder if the full time staff from Xapos are drawing their salary in fiat or bitcoins. If it is the latter, it is kind of an unstable lifestyle, don't you think?

Most features like buying and selling to make fiat is only available countries, so you can’t really take advantage of such features. Also it’s better to use well known wallets, the blockchain wallet is really good though there are fees when transactions are made.

XAPO and Coinbase may earn from the Debitcards that they provide to customers in the form of debit card fees. I haven't seen ads on their websites, so I doubt they earn from ads. Also, maybe they may temporarily invest the funds we add to their wallets, just like banks do and earn from these.

they have profits from ads, if a lot of peoples are using it means that a lot of peoples see that ads and they earn good profit from that

Obviously as a xapo  user i think they only holds bitcoin and do not exchange bitcoin to fiat so you will surely be not going to lose money at all because you are just holding an amount of bitcoins, even if the price is not stable.

From ads? I never seeing the advertise in the blockchain and maybe the source income for surviving just coming from the tax fee from every transaction. but for blockchain, i'm not feeling doubt about that because every second is always there a transaction.

They charge pretty good for people that want to exchange bitcoin there, they have some fees when you deposit money there or when to buy bitcoin and also a fee when you want to withdraw your funds so pretty much their profit is here.

As it's been said, there are sponsors, premium features or whatever (some sort of advanced service for certain people), and Xapo and Coinbase are an exchange as well as a wallet, so they make money off of people exchanging Bitcoin and USD on their site. Having a wallet there is just a plus, and something to keep people using them.

Plus transaction fees are typically pennies, so it doesn't really matter.

That is a good question actually, but it is same like with all faucet websites- they are still alive, thanks to the advertisers, and people
 that want to enter in there.
However doing btc wallet that earn only on ads looks hard for me, i mean to have enough users to cover the fees.

open up a link to a bitcoin "transaction" and you will see two big pictures at the bottom of the page those are advertisement.

also i have not seen the new version but in the old version of the wallet in your home page of the wallet you could see multiple links to services like gyft on the upper right side of the screen these are also ads.

I notice too how xapo are still alive as of now how they are paying the fee's for transaction how that site are earnings with their service..
Coinbase in not the same as xapo because coinbase has their own exchange page that you can buy an sell altcoin or bitcoin.
I use xapo before but i having delayed in loging in to receive confirmation its always happenning.

what's in the back of the mind of the properly run operators like coinbase is the prospect of being bought out I expect. that's what vc money dreams about.

a bitcoin company, and bitcoin itself of course, has to work seriously, seriously hard to earn trust. if coinbase ended up with 50-100 million or more users who've spent years with them that adds massive value if someone wants to buy them.

it's not like switching to a new social media site. people often stick with the same bank their whole lives even when they're crappy. the same might go for bitcoin service companies.

There are two reason of survival.
1.buying and selling bitcoin have a great profit.
2.the amount of website you used or view ,they are directly earning through it.

Have you ever thought how much user uses these wallet?
Even a single ads with such a high traffic can gain you enough amount of money.

Coinbase and Xapo wallets do not have ads in their sites so that is not it.
These sites are both wallets and exchangers themselves so from that information, they survive and successful in their business most probably from the earnings they get from selling/buying bitcoins.

Exactly chief that's the main reason why they survive how many peoples who buy and sell bitcoins and they just get a small bit as a payment but even that small exchange they already have a profit .

They probably doing trading with our coins. haha

Blockchain has news as well ads you can see them at home i remember to be there the btcjam last year now its bitbond a loan system, about coinbase i dont know, if they dont sell those space they promote and earn the comission from the people who invest.

They use a lower fee mostly (I tried some of them before), I, too wonder how they cover that fee. I doubt they are investing the deposits or treating it like a bank but maybe they cover it as a better customer experience and from the profit they get from exchanging USD and BTC.

i would say that advertising is their main income but they my also have a subscription with more account options, i dont use them so wouldn't know for sure.

I don't know why you say Coinbase doesn't charge fees when they just raised their fees recently, correct me if im wrong.

Every online wallet ever charges a fee, and they make money from the traffic which may click on advertisements or may buy premium services, it's the standard online business model really.

Well it is now obviously through their script i think they were able to discover those.  Same as how bitcoin was discovered so things may be connected. The lower the fees the provide the more people would start using their system

what fees are you talking about?
i am not using coinbase but using google it seems like they use 0.25% just like any other exchange out there. and their main revenue is from exchange fees they receive and all other kinds of fee from deposit/withdrawals of fiat and crypto.

90% of online wallets are maintained through a company that has some kind of exchange service behind it on top of whatever else it has, so something like 0.25% on the exchange fee is probably fairly reasonable to be honest. With a big enough volume they can be making a ton of money, and easily maintain the wallet service, which I'm sure they're doing.

I guess they profit via ads. But xapo and coinbase also have debit cards so maybe they are making money of the fees?

The no additional transaction fee is a marketing strategy that has been employed by the online wallets to attract new members. They get more money via advertisements. There are also fee's for buying Bitcoin via these accounts. In fact, they are making much more money than you may think they are.

:)

But I don't think about getting their survive from ads, but in my minds, they're just surviving from the fees the get it from the transaction of everyone in their site.
Their main income that is from the transaction fees.

I`ve never seen an online wallet that doesn`t charge transaction fees.

They all charge transaction fees, because they all need revenue to pay for hosting and everything else.

This is their business model.

Obviously, Xapo does not charge transaction fees.
However that does not means they dont pay it, they just have another business model- they pay it from ads, donations etc. Not directly from users transactions.

blockchain.info is an online wallet and doesn't charge fee to pay hosting or what ever,all of the fee is fully given for the miners and blockchain.info don't took the bitcoin even a little bit,maybe you're talking about wallet which has provided by an exhanger,they'll charge fee about few cents or even less but it's for the service they offered,so no problem at all

blockchain.info is filled with advertisement but since they are not intrusive people don't feel when they are shown to them.
on the pages when you search for a transaction id there is one big ass ad on the bottom right corner.

and they don't even stop there, in the old version of the wallet (have not tried the new one) there were multiple small ads on the top right corner of the first page after login.

Plus they've got links to several bitcoin related services, so we can assume those were sponsored links. I don't mind those, they're pretty convenient as I see it.

Correct me if I am wrong but from what I know no 'pure wallet' (by which I mean service offering only bitcoin wallet capabilities - nothing more).
Have zero fee policy - zero fee is bait feature of multiservices like Coinbase which is wallet, and bitcoin exchange.
They are so big that with site's ads + service fee from their exchange it is possible for then to pay a transaction fee for you.

They clearly survive because they're centralized , when you do something wrong in their eyes they go ahead and seize your coins. It's the wild freaking west man. Don't trust them with your private keys!

you are correct sir.
all the wallets that are similar to coinbase in case they offer a no fee service it means they are earning money through other methods like the fees they take on your fiat deposit or withdrawals to buy bitcoin. or some of them offer additional card services that charge for it.

You need to classify wallets:
-Blockchain.info and most gambling sites: You pay the fees, it's extracted or added from the beginning of the transaction
-coinbase, circle: probably because they are exchanges they get the fee from their exchanging profit, they probably cover it as an additional service to gain users acceptance
-shady sites: to encourage people to use it to take it all later.

Many of the online wallets services (like coinbase, blockchain, xapo, etc.,) having their own exchanges and they'll have some fees. OR if  wallet doesn't have its own exchange (blockchain.info) there will be some ads on that website. I think this is the way that they're live (?).

I do not know why they can survive possible from ads that are installed on their website and it being their income.

Alternatively, they are burning their cash and waiting for buy outs from VCs ?

of course they are getting revenue from ads. they have huge sponsors for their sites. but in the other side they do various things to  survive. like above guy said all wallets have their on exchange where people can buy sell bitcoins.
and one more thing is the transaction fees. they will gain huge money with daily transactions.

Most operate under mining pools and the fees made during online wallet transactions are used for the mining pools, so they are certainly making a profit.

I think their income not come from fees but from other we never know as we know if the fee transaction is for the miner.

definitely not the fees,when you input a fees all the fees that you're just input is not being cut off by the online wallet,it's all to pay the miner fee for the transaction,for proof,if you use blockchain,copy the transaction id (tx) and then explore it in another blockchain explorer and then the fee will remain the same as you input before

I know about it but he tell if online wallet get income from fees transaction so from where online wallet get income by run this business.

If they had only one feature to offer the service of an online bitcoin wallet then they couldn't survive by covering the fees.

But as we know they have other services like exchanges for usd/btc and ethereum recently (coinbase) so they take fees on every exchange.

Xapo besides exchange service they have also the bitcoin debit card which they take a fee as well.