EDITED -- UPDATE: A friend tried this. The credit card took 4 days to clear through Coinbase, it had a 100 euro limit, and the charge was 3.5%. He then did a bank transfer which was (a) cheaper, (b) had a higher limit, and (c) took 2 days instead of 4. If you want more than 100 euros and can wait 2 days before you start buying, use this method instead. STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO BUYING ETHER (bank transfer) 0. Decide how much you want to invest. Only use money you can afford to lose. A lot of folks think Ether is going to go way up, but you should be willing to accept the risk that it could go to zero. 1. Register at kraken.com. This is one of the best online trading sites. They deal in all kind of cryptocurrency. You can think of them as a bank where you can store money and cryptocurrency and trade freely between them. 2. In your Kraken account, click on "Get Verified", scroll to the bottom and upgrade from Tier 0 to Tier 1, then Tier 1 to Tier 2. Very easy to do, just some minimal information and no documentation to send. At Tier 2 you can send and receive money with bank transfers and trade cryptocurrency. 3. Now click on "Funding", then "Deposit", then pick your currency in the side menu. 4. Choose Deposit Method from the dropdown. My bank uses SEPA. You should check with your bank how to a wire transfer to send money. It will be on their webpage. You will get all the information you need to enter on your online banking site to send money. Read the "important" points in the instructions, they want you to include the proper codes so it goes to right place. 5. Send money from your bank! We send from Norway to England. It takes 2 days. This is good, because the transfer is reviewed by actual humans, so they should catch any errors. 6. Check back with Kraken each day. Has your money arrived yet? Yes?... Now you have money in an exchange and can buy stuff! 7. In the top left corner is a dropdown menu to choose type of trade. Choose ETH/EUR or ETH/USD or ETH/your currency here. 8. Click on "Trade". Find out how much cash you have and copy this amount. 9. Click on "New Order". "Simple" is the type of trade selected by default, that's fine. 10. The green button should be clicked to BUY. 11. In the first field, Amount, click on the dropdown meny and choose XBT. The text under should say "Amount of EUR (or USD) to spend". Paste in the the amount of money you want to spend. 12. In the middle is a button for Market/Limit. Click on "Market". That says you will buy at market price. (You can instead set a limit which with automatically buy for you a price you set, so if the price comes down it buys automatically. I think. I've never actually done that.) 13. Click the big green button: BUY ETH WITH EUR (or USD). Complete the order. It will take a few minutes for the buy to take place. Now you have ether! You can follow the price here: https://www.cryptocompare.com/coins/eth/overview/USD Your ether can live at Kraken for as long as you like. You can sell it for dollars whenever you want to, and then do a bank transfer to send money to your bank account. It's actually safer to hold your ether in what is called a "paper wallet". If you get this far and want to do that I can talk you through it. http://myetherwallet.com is a great place to create secure wallets. Just ask if you want help. Good luck!