Gift cards, paid for with crypto

Check the region before anything else

This is the mistake that wastes money, and it is not reversible. Gift card balances are locked to a country's storefront by the issuer — a US Amazon code will not load on the UK site, and a euro PlayStation code will not redeem on a US PSN account. No shop can unlock that, ours included.

So before you order, check which storefront your account actually belongs to. It is set by the country on the account, not by where you are sitting. If you order the wrong region, tell us before you redeem and you get a refund; once a code is loaded onto an account the balance belongs to that account permanently.

What a legitimate code costs, and why

Close to face value. A gift card is a fixed amount of money, so the margin on selling one is thin by definition — there is no version of this business where a $100 card sells for $70 and everyone stays honest. When you see that price, what is usually being sold is a code bought with a stolen card that will be clawed back weeks later, a code that has already been redeemed, or account access rather than a code at all.

All three end the same way: the balance disappears and the payment cannot be reversed. Paying face value plus a small handling margin is what buying a real one costs.

How fast it actually arrives

Minutes, once the payment confirms — and the confirmation is the slow part, not us. A payment on Tron or Solana confirms in seconds; Bitcoin during a busy period can take considerably longer. If your order still says awaiting payment, the network has not finished, and sending a second payment will only create an overpayment you then have to reclaim.

Denominations and topping up

Pick the closest denomination to what you need rather than the exact amount. Most issuers let several codes stack onto one balance, so two smaller cards work where one odd amount is unavailable. Balances do not expire on most of the brands here, but a few do carry expiry rules in certain countries, which is worth thirty seconds of checking on the issuer's own site before you buy a large amount.

Buying one as a gift

Gift cards travel well as presents because the recipient needs no account with us and no crypto of their own — they get a code and redeem it on their own account, and nothing traces back to how it was bought. Order the region their account belongs to rather than the region they live in; those are not always the same thing, particularly for anyone who set up an account while living abroad.

One thing worth saying to anyone you send a card to, because it is the most common scam in the world involving these: no tax office, utility company, government department or police force has ever accepted a gift card as payment for anything. If someone asks a relative of yours to settle a bill or a fine with codes, that request is itself the fraud, and the money is gone the moment the code is read out.

Check the balance the moment it arrives

Every issuer has a balance-check page. Using it immediately confirms three things at once: the code is real, it has not been spent, and the amount matches. It also means any problem is raised while the order is fresh rather than a fortnight later. One quirk worth knowing — some cards are sold inactive and activate shortly after purchase, so a legitimate code reading as invalid in the first hour usually resolves itself.