Relai

The Relai name does not mean the same contract everywhere. Relai AG operates in Switzerland, while French company Relai EU SASU serves European clients. France’s financial regulator AMF lists the latter under licence A2025-006, dated October 23, 2025, for exchanging crypto-assets for money under the European MiCA framework. The practical consequence is straightforward: a Swiss price list or an old advertisement may not describe your European account. Moving a profile to the European company therefore involves accepting new terms. Check which company your contract names before comparing its prices and limits. [1] [2]

Imagine your phone stops working. Email login and identity verification may restore access to the service, but they cannot recreate the keys to your bitcoin. The wallet has twelve recovery words following the BIP39 standard, known as a Seed Phrase. A compatible wallet can use them to derive your private keys again. Neither your PIN nor email access replaces the right words in the right order. Relai says it holds no copy it could send you. The words originate in the mobile wallet and are not displayed by the web app. Restoring them in another compatible wallet returns control of the bitcoin, not automatically your Relai trading profile and history. Keep the backup securely away from your phone and never share it. [3] [5]

For a purchase, follow the quote labelled Relai Price rather than a general price chart. Relai trades directly with you, so its rate can differ from another exchange’s. With a card, the displayed acceptance window applies, and the trade becomes final after successful payment processing. With instant SEPA, a bank transfer in euros, the quote lasts thirty minutes. If the money has not arrived, a new quote replaces it; the price at receipt is the one that counts. A transfer sent late may therefore buy at a different rate from the original email. Both the amount and the sending IBAN, your account’s international identifier, must match the order. The European terms require instant SEPA rather than an ordinary slower transfer. [3] [4]

“No service fee” does not yet tell you how much bitcoin your money will buy. The pricing policy separates Relai’s margin, the markup in its rate, from the service fee and payment-method costs. A discount on one component does not automatically remove the others, such as the card surcharge. Compare the total amount you pay with the bitcoin you will receive. Under the policy, Relai covers the network fee for delivering purchased bitcoin, but exceptional network congestion can delay dispatch. Selling and later sending from your own wallet have separate costs to consider; covering the purchase delivery does not make future transfers free. [4]

Recurring purchases can save you from entering each order manually, but payment methods work differently. Relai charges a card at each scheduled occurrence. If insufficient funds cause a failure, the terms provide for one retry thirty minutes later, at the rate then in effect. With instant SEPA, a matching payment must arrive for each purchase, and the quote renews until it does. Suppose you stop the plan in Relai but leave a standing order running at your bank: those bank payments will not stop themselves. Check both settings and the notices for individual orders when ending the plan. Cancelling future purchases does not reverse an exchange already completed. [3] [4]

Purchased bitcoin does not have to go into the mobile wallet Relai created. A July 2026 guide describes adding an external wallet through wallet.relai.app on a computer. With a hardware wallet, a device that protects private keys, the address is also confirmed on the device’s own screen. That checks where the coins should actually arrive, not just what the computer displays. You can then select the saved wallet in the mobile app. Pay attention to the entry you choose: the Relai-created wallet and the connected one remain different wallets even when shown together. This guide for the ordinary app says selling from an external wallet is unsupported. The separate corporate service Relai Business has its own process; being able to buy through a route does not automatically mean you can sell through it. [6] [3]

Selling requires more than accepting a price and sending some bitcoin later. European terms require the exact amount from the wallet named in the order and at least three on-chain confirmations within four hours of order confirmation. On-chain means recorded in Bitcoin’s chain: inclusion in a block gives the first confirmation, and subsequent blocks add more. Sending the payment is therefore not the same as meeting this condition. The wrong amount or wallet can lead to cancellation and a bitcoin refund minus network fees; without a matching transfer the order expires. Even a correctly completed sale does not mean the euros are already visible at your bank. Network confirmation and bank settlement are successive steps, although the sale price was agreed beforehand. [3]

You can stop using the exchange service while keeping control of your bitcoin. Rejecting the European terms can end access to buying and selling through Relai, but the personal wallet can be restored from its backup. Deleting the account does not move coins or instruct anyone to sell them. It does not erase Bitcoin’s chain either, and Relai states that some records of completed trades must be kept by law. Before removing the app, check that your backup is correct and complete and that you understand how to restore access with it. Leaving the service, recovering keys and retaining past trade records are separate matters. [2] [7]