Improve trust on LocalBitcoins.com by verifying your identity

A screenshot of the identity verification process.

Whether you're buying or selling bitcoins it's important that both the buyer and the seller can trust each other. We offer a number of ways to increase that trust, one of them being the ability to verify your real life identity with your LocalBitcoins.com account.

By verifying your identity you get access to more trade advertisements as well as more visibility for your own trade advertisements, if you are a trader.  

The verification process is provided as a third party service called Netverify by Jumio. You can find the link to start the verification process by going to Edit profile on the main website and then scrolling down to verification. Or you can click on this link to start verification.  

In order to verify your identity with your LocalBitcoins.com account you will need a valid ID (Passport, ID card or drivers license) at hand and a web camera. You can see how the process will work on Jumios' website. Right now most countries around the world are supported, with more countries added soon.  

The verification process is automated and is usually completed quickly, 95% of the verifications are completed within 5 minutes. Once the process completes your public profile will be updated to include a check mark showing that you have verified your identity with LocalBitcoins.com.

When you have completed verification it will be visible on your public profile with a green checkmark.

Now you will start seeing trade advertisements where the buyer or seller have set it to only show for ID verified accounts and if you are a trader then your trade advertisements will have better visibility.  

Don't forget that you can also verify your e-mail address as well as your phone number!  

Happy bitcoin trading!

Feature spotlight: Opening hours for trade advertisements

Judging when a trader is online and how long it will take for him to reply can be a challenge at times, so we created a new feature for traders that we’re hoping will make this less of a pain. 

While creating new trade advertisements or editing existing ones, traders can now see a new section called Opening hours, where they can set start and end times for each day of the week. This allows traders to set opening hours on a day-by-day basis for when they accept trade offers from customers. 

Outside of the opening hours set, trade adverts will be hidden from public view. Traders can use this feature to only show trade adverts when they are able to actively process offers, making it easier to buy or sell coins without having to guess how soon a trader will reply to your offer.

How to set up

A screenshot showing the new feature on the LocalBitcoins.com website.

To set up opening hours for a new trader advertisement scroll down to the opening hours section of the Create a bitcoin trade advertisement page. Here you’ll see a list of every day of the week and two drop-down menus. The left one sets the time (in your timezone) when you want your trade adverts to appear on the site. The right one sets the time when you want your trade adverts to be hidden away from view. 

You can change your timezone by editing your profile.

Once you’ve created a trade advertisement you can change your opening hours at any time by editing the advertisement. 

Happy bitcoining!