Anycoin Direct is an exchange founded in the Netherlands in April 2013. The Company has reached popularity in just 2 months time. The exchange was first launched with the brand name Bitplaats and soon established itself as one of the most trusted Bitcoin businesses in the Netherlands. Bitplaats rebranded two months ago as Anycoin direct and launched its new site, anycoindirect.eu; Anycoin Direct has grown into popularity and has already traded over 25.000 Bitcoin, which is significant since the exchange opened only 5 month ago. Anycoin exchange is also said to be specially oriented to the European digital currency markets, with cleared access to all European countries.
Bitcoinist contacted Anycoin Team and had some time to do a short Q&A with the exchange Co-founder and support Administrator, Bram Ceelen.
Q&A
Tell us about the exchange history and how the idea was born?
We started our service on April 4th 2013 as Bitplaats.nl. We liked the idea of Bitcoin and its possibility’s but we noticed it took long and was pretty hard to buy them (especially for beginners). We wanted to change that. We figured the easiest way was to start with the Dutch direct payment method iDEAL. Through iDEAL people can make online purchases and the payment method is irreversible, a done payment can’t be canceled or charged back by the customer. That made the payment method ideal for Bitcoin. Within a few months we became a trusted and respected player in the Dutch Bitcoin community. After a lot of questions from people of Belgium we decided to expand our service to Belgium. So we made a similar website for Belgium customers (Bitplaats.be). As we became a more known Bitcoin seller we started getting request from other European countries. Because of that we started working on the project Anycoin Direct. The idea was to make Bitcoin easily accessible for everyone in Europe. By the integration of several direct payment methods (iDEAL, Bancontact, Giropay and MyBank) and SEPA bank transfer the service of Anycoin Direct is accessible for almost everyone in Europe. 
What can you tell us about the team?
Our team is composed by 1 investor and 3 co-founders. The co-founders are:
Bram Ceelen: Customer support and administration
Lennert Vlemmings: Security and business relations
Julian van der Wijst: Programmer
What’s the exchange provided options?
Our platform offers an easy way to buy or sell crypto currency. At this time we don’t have more advanced trading options. We want to make our service as easy and accessible as possible. We think for Bitcoin to grow it’s important to have services which makes it easy for beginners to get to know the world of crypto currency. Anycoin Direct never controls money of customers (no fiat and no crypto currency), unlike most other services. When a customer buys crypto currency through a direct payment method the coins will automatically be send to the customer’s wallet as soon as they finish the payment. Because of that Anycoin Direct makes it possible to buy crypto currency within minutes. A process which can take hours, or even days with other services.
If a customer chooses to buy through SEPA the coins will be sending to the customer’s wallet when we receive the money on our bank account. An important note on SEPA orders is the price gets determined at the moment the customer initiates the order, not when we receive the money (some services determine the price on the moment the money arrives). Because of this our customers can profit from (short term) opportunities.
To offer the best possible customer support we have chosen to add a live chat to our website. If someone has a question about an order or crypto currency in general they can contact us through the chat and get an answer right away. Because of this the customer support of Anycoin Direct belongs to the best in the industry.
What are the exchanges’s funding options?
Anycoin Direct uses different direct payment methods:
– iDEAL Dutch
– Bancontact Belgium
– Giropay German
– MyBank Different European country’s
Anycoin Direct also offers the opportunity to buy through a SEPA bank transfer which is available in almost all European countries.
Can you explain the exchange fee structure?
At this moment we charge 0.3% fee (+ the fee of the payment processor, which is different for each payment method) for buying cryptocurrency and 1% for selling cryptocurrency (for selling there is no payment processor fee). The fee may get lower in the future; this depends on the market development and our volume.
Do you have any agreements with other company’s third parties?
We work with Bitstamp and Cryptsy as our main exchanges to make our trades. We are working on integrating more exchanges to offer a better price to our customers.
We also work closely with a Dutch payment provider which provides access to all our direct payment methods.
Are you planning for future implementations and changes?
In the future we will offer even more coins. We haven’t decided yet which ones we will be adding. We will also add more direct payment methods to make our service even more accessible. Besides that we are looking for options to expand our service outside of Europe.
Photo source:Anycoindirect