Accepting FIAT during the ICO

The Value of Fiat Money  

It’s a well-known fact that fiat currency is the legal money of every country, which we use in everyday life to cover our expenses. USD, euros, pounds, pesos, dinars—you can easily perform transactions or payments using any currency, and they are regulated by the banking system of the country, guaranteeing an exact level of security. Many factors influence the value of fiat money: for instance, the stability of the country’s economy, hyperinflation, supply and demand, fraud, and so on. Fiat money has one important feature—convertibility. That means you can convert any currency into gold, silver, or any other precious metal or gemstone.

The Benefits of Supporting Fiat Currency in Your ICO Project

How can you contribute your fiat money to an ICO? Yes, you read that right: USD and euros work with crowd sales. It is valuable to note that a lot of ICOs used to accept payments in USD or EU from potential investors to get their tokens before the crowd sale. Nowadays, approximately 15%-20% of current ICOs use fiat for contributions, as it helps to attract more potential investors. Here at Applicature, we have investigated different ways to invest your fiat money, get the tokens, and become a crypto investor.

Wire Transfer Payment Types

Let’s start with wire transfers. In order to contribute your fiat money to one of the current token sales, the first and easiest thing to do is to send, for instance, USD to a bank account. This will engage a third party (the bank), and you will have to pay the fee that is required by the bank you choose.

Do keep in mind that the bank will put you under certain conditions, and the money transfer won’t be executed right after sending the funds. That’s why you need to be ready to wait for the payment. Moreover, be careful with pre-sale and ICO dates to be on the safe side.

Now you are ready to learn more about these kinds of payments.

CrowdWiz ICO  lets their investors make payments in BTC, ETH, and LTC. It is also easy to make payments with fiat money (USD) using your bank card or wire transfers. Just log in, choose the payment type, and get all the necessary information for the wire transfer.

Ananas Foundation, which promotes peace through technology, created their token, the Anacoin, for content creation for charity and building projects. You can buy their tokens via your bank card or Ethereums after whitelisting registration.
Anacoin accepts 135 fiat currencies and you may use Visa, Mastercard, American Express and others.

Credit or debit card payments are executed by Stripe  – a web and mobile app that accepts all major bank cards around the world. It is simple to use, and you can save your data to make money transactions easily later on.

If you take part in Ser Tokens ICO, you simply send money through a wire transfer, adding your ETH address on the specification. Then just wait until your coins are minted to your wallet.

To buy NVB token, you’ll need to generate an invoice that will be sent to your email and pay it. In this way, you will get a deposit. After that, you will be able to buy NVB tokens.

Cryptocurrency Exchanges

The second way you may choose to contribute your money is by using cryptocurrency exchange services. In this case, an investor must diligently choose a suitable exchange and adhere to these principles: website security, ability to offer sufficient liquidity, transaction fees and spread, high ratings etc.

To demonstrate, the most famous cryptocurrency exchanges are Coinbase (considered to be the best one), Bittrex, Kraken, BitFinex, CoinMama, LocalBitcoins, Gemini, Bisq, Bitstamp, and CEX.IO. These exchanges offer security and steady rates.

If you want to participate in a crowd sale, you must know that for this purpose, you will need Ethers, as the usual tokens are ERC20 tokens based upon the Ethereum network. Moreover, using a cryptocurrency exchange, the conversion process is automated by the exchange.

The cryptocurrency exchange rate also differs from one website to another. In any case, you should investigate and choose the most constant one. Here is an example how to perform an exchange transaction using this type of cryptocurrency exchange:

From the investor’s FIAT payment gateway → exchange market to purchase ICO’s choice cryptocurrency → deposit of choice cryptocurrency to ICO’s designated wallet address → receipt of token equivalent.

This way is quite complex and confusing, so some ICOs establish platforms to make it easier. You can subscribe through fiat-based payment gateways.

From the investor’s FIAT payment gateway → ICO’s designated payment gateway→ receipt of token equivalent.

To demonstrate, LHcoin facilitates wire transfer for contributions over 10,000 USD. They suggest using IndaCoin for Visa/Mastercard transactions. IndaCoin is a commonly used cryptocurrency exchange that accepts the following fiat currencies: USD, EUR and RUB.

Another example is TOKIA which accepts more than 50 fiat currencies without KYC or a maximum contribution—500 USD executed by IndaCoin. Also, you are allowed to buy Tokia tokens directly using your Mastercard or Visa.

One can invest in Brickblock’s ICO creating a digital wallet using CUBITS : a platform where you can buy and sell Bitcoins using fiat currencies. You will need to insert your personal details, verify your data, and complete payment in Bitcoins.

Once you get your BTC, you are able to contribute in Brickblock’s ICO:

Are Broker Services Trustworthy?

Let’s go one step further. Brokers and ICOs? Sounds weird, doesn’t it? You can find lots of firms on the internet. Brokers charge fees (commissions) for their services. A broker can give you pieces of advice concerning the state of current market values. They are in charge of successful transactions between a buyer and a seller, and they know the market well, so it’s important to pay attention to these kinds of services for crypto-trading.

The last way to buy cryptocurrency with fiat currencies is to use the services of an intermediary. The most famous service is the Bitcoin Suisse. You can find the list of ICOs that use the broker service on their website:

For instance, MOEDA uses broker Bitcoin Suisse to convert all crypto contributions/donations into Bitcoin and fiat money.
Experty points out on their website that they accept contributions only through the Bitcoin Suisse service; otherwise, they consider any contributions to be invalid.

You can see from the list that Bitcoin Suisse is quite a popular service, so hopefully, lots of people can trust them and become their customers.

The Explosive Growth of ICO Contributors

There is a vast number of adds and pop-ups announcing live crowd sales appearing on the Internet while you are using your favorite browser. ICOs have now become so popular, people are struggling to build a new era with crypto tokens, fee-free trading, crypto wallets, and investors all over the world in terms of decentralization. Think I’m exaggerating?

Check it out. Up until the beginning of January 2018, the cryptocurrency market cap reached $712,459,914,205, with Bitcoin’s dominance at 33.6%, according to CoinMarketCap. This looks quite astonishing, as cryptocurrency is gaining more and more trust among people all over the world. The numbers mentioned above testify to this statement.

As more and more people become engaged in the cryptocurrency world, so the number of crypto investors has grown rapidly. If you are an owner of Ethers or Bitcoins, you may easily contribute to one of the numerous ICOs in a traditional way. For example, the most active ones for winter 2018 are:
Rentberry – a decentralized home rental platform; Trippki – a hotel booking and rewards platform; HOQU -a  marketing platform. The list seems to be endless.

Smart contracts are also at their highest point, more and more people develop their ICO project on Ethereum platform. To keep you informed, Applicature provides the guide to show you the main principles of smart contracts.

You can easily keep track of all upcoming and ongoing crowd sales using these services:

• ICO Watchlist
• ICO Rating
• Smith&Crowns
• ICO Tracker 
• ICO List 

In a nutshell, the first thing you should do before investing your money is to check the service you choose yourself. Don’t trust unverified sources of information. You are responsible for your own security and business, so think twice. We have tried to provide you with the most popular ways to invest your fiat money in an initial coin offering: wire transfers, cryptocurrency exchanges, and brokers. Now it’s your turn to choose, and become involved into the decentralized cryptocurrency world.