How to Buy Bitcoin on IG: the Step-by-Step Walkthrough (2026)

What do you need before you can buy?

IG keeps crypto in its own account, separate from spread betting, CFDs and share dealing, so there are three small hurdles before your first purchase.

None is difficult, but the last one surprises people.

Step 1: open the spot crypto account

If you are new to IG, the application takes a few minutes online. If you already have an IG account, you add a crypto account from inside My IG rather than applying from scratch, and it appears alongside your other accounts on the dashboard. Either way, crypto sits inside the same login as everything else you do with IG, which is half the appeal of buying it through a broker rather than opening yet another exchange account.

Step 2: the suitability questions, then the 24-hour wait

The FCA's crypto rules require platforms to check you understand what you are buying, so IG asks a short questionnaire about your knowledge and experience. Answer it honestly, because IG treats it as a genuine gate. Once approved there is a 24-hour waiting period before you can fund the account and buy, a deliberate cooling-off step rather than a processing delay. Plan for it: you cannot open the account and buy the dip in the same hour, and knowing that in advance saves the frustration.

Step 3: fund it from £100

The minimum deposit is £100, and the crypto account is pickier about payment methods than IG's other accounts, so the detail matters.

The three funding routes

Debit card works, but GBP-denominated cards only for the crypto account. Bank transfer runs through Faster Payments from a personal UK account in your own name, initiated through the payment widget in the Crypto section of My IG (a route available to clients who joined after 19 May 2025). PayPal is the third option. Bank transfers are free, and once the money lands you are ready to trade.

How do you actually place the trade?

The buying flow itself is the easy part, and it works the same in the app and on the web platform.

Pick the coin, type the pounds

Select Bitcoin from the crypto list, enter how much you want to spend in pounds, and the platform shows exactly how much Bitcoin you will receive with the fee already included in the quote. You are buying a fraction of a coin, not a whole one, so £100 of Bitcoin is as valid an order as £10,000. Review the confirmation screen, tap buy, and the coins appear in your account immediately. What you see at the preview is what you pay, which sounds like a low bar until you compare it with exchanges that reveal their fee at the end of the flow.

Know what order types you have (and have not) got

IG's spot crypto currently executes at the live market price when you confirm. There are no limit orders or stop losses on the spot account yet, so you cannot leave a resting order to buy Bitcoin at a target price or protect a holding with an automatic sell. For most buy-and-hold purchases that changes nothing, but if your trading depends on precise entries or automated exits, check the position before you fund the account rather than after. IG has said publicly that both order types are in development.

What does buying Bitcoin on IG cost?

The structure is two tiers, and which tier your coin sits in is the entire fee schedule.

The big three: 0% commission plus 0.07%

On Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana, IG charges no commission and passes through a 0.07% external exchange fee from its liquidity partner Uphold. In cash terms, 7 pence per £100, or 70 pence per £1,000, which is among the cheapest routes to spot Bitcoin available to UK retail buyers, and there is no separate spread published on top of it, though IG notes pricing can widen in high volatility and on very large trades.

Everything else: a flat 1.49%

The 100-plus other coins on the platform cost a flat 1.49%, and that single rate covers buying, selling and swapping. It is competitive against the convenient routes on the big exchanges and expensive against their pro interfaces. Put plainly, IG's crypto pricing is built to make the majors extremely cheap and the long tail simply straightforward.

The incidentals

Bank transfer deposits are free, IG charges nothing to withdraw your pounds, and there are no account fees on the crypto account itself. The full breakdown, including exactly how the 0.07% works and what "0% commission" does and does not mean, is in my IG crypto fees analysis.

Who actually holds your Bitcoin?

This is the question that matters more than any fee, so it deserves a precise answer rather than a reassuring one.

You own the coins; a regulated custodian stores them

When you buy on IG you take beneficial ownership of real Bitcoin; this is spot crypto, not a derivative tracking the price. The coins are held in your beneficial interest by IG's institutional custody partner: IG's pages name Coinbase Prime, a regulated custodian carrying independently audited SOC 1 Type 2 and SOC 2 Type 2 security certifications. In plain terms, IG runs the relationship and the platform, and a specialist institution keeps the keys.

Moving coins in and out

IG has launched transfers into the account for around 20 major tokens, including BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, DOGE, LINK and AVAX, so existing holdings elsewhere can be consolidated. Withdrawals to your own external wallet are not live yet; IG says they are coming. Until they arrive, IG is a place to buy and hold rather than a gateway to self-custody, which suits its core buyer and genuinely will not suit everyone.

Regulated, but not FSCS-protected

IG joined the FCA's cryptoasset register in October 2025, the first UK-listed broker to do so, on top of its long-standing FCA authorisation as a broker. What no registration changes is that cryptoassets are not covered by the FSCS on any platform anywhere, and the value of Bitcoin can fall as fast as it rises. The regulatory standing tells you about the firm; it does not protect the price.

Is IG a good place to buy Bitcoin?

For buying and holding the big coins inside a regulated broker you may already use, yes. The case rests on cost and convenience: 70 pence per £1,000 on Bitcoin undercuts the convenient routes on the dedicated exchanges, the fee shows before you buy, and the coins sit under the same login as your other investments with an institutional custodian behind them. The trade-offs are a focused rather than exhaustive coin list, no staking, market-price execution only for now, and no external wallet withdrawals yet.

If you are weighing IG against the exchanges, my comparisons with eToro, Kraken and Coinbase cover where each one wins, and the swap feature has its own guide in crypto swaps on IG.

FAQs

References

1. IG: spot crypto account and funding minimums
2. IG: crypto fees (0% commission + 0.07% external fee on BTC/ETH/SOL; 1.49% other coins)
3. IG: buying flow and custody arrangements
4. The Investors Centre: my full IG crypto fee analysis