P2P Trading

Peer-to-peer trading is an exchange-run marketplace where users buy and sell crypto directly from each other for local currency, with the platform holding the crypto in escrow rather than processing the payment. A seller advertises a rate and the payment methods they accept, a buyer opens a trade, the seller's crypto is locked, the buyer pays them outside the platform by bank transfer or a local payment app, and the seller releases the escrow once the money has arrived. It exists because banking rails do not reach everywhere equally: in markets where an exchange cannot offer card or transfer funding of its own, P2P is often the only fiat route in or out. The risk sits in the half escrow does not cover. The payment leg runs on a network the exchange does not control, so a reversed transfer, a chargeback days later, a payment sent by a third party rather than the counterparty, or a dispute opened after release are all outside what the locked crypto can settle. Release only once the money is confirmed in your own account rather than in a screenshot, keep the whole conversation inside the platform where the appeals process can read it, refuse payments from a name other than your counterparty's, and keep the payment reference — an appeal usually turns on evidence only one side kept.