Yes, you can buy cryptocurrency with a gift card. If you have one sitting in a drawer that you are never going to spend, there are marketplaces that will take it in exchange for Bitcoin or a stablecoin.
Before any of that, one sentence, because it is the reason most people arrive at this question.
If Somebody Told You to Buy Gift Cards, Stop Here
The US Federal Trade Commission puts it first on its own gift card page: “Only scammers will tell you to buy a gift card, like a Google Play or Apple Card, and give them the numbers off the back of the card.” The next sentence is “No matter what they say, that’s a scam.”
It also says, flatly, that “No real business or government agency will ever tell you to buy a gift card to pay them.” That covers the tax office, the police, your bank’s fraud team, a utility, a romantic interest you have not met, and anyone offering to recover money you have lost.
If it has already happened, contact the gift card company first. The FTC’s own guidance is to “Report the gift card scam to the gift card company right away” and ask for your money back. Keep the card and the receipt.
Then report it to the body that handles fraud where you live. In India that is the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal at cybercrime.gov.in, run by the Ministry of Home Affairs, which takes financial fraud complaints.
In England, Wales and Northern Ireland it is reportfraud.police.uk or 0300 123 2040, and in Scotland you report via 101. In Germany it is the police Onlinewache portal at portal.onlinewache.polizei.de, with 110 for emergencies.
In the United States it is ReportFraud.ftc.gov, whose own line is “Every report makes a difference.” On 28 September 2026 that page carried a notice that “Due to the government shutdown, we are unable to offer this website service”, so check whether it is taking reports again.
Never pay anyone who offers to trace or recover the money. An offer to get back what you lost is the second scam, and the first sign of it is a fee requested up front.
Key Takeaways
- Converting a gift card you own is legal and possible, and being told to buy gift cards by anyone at all is a scam signature rather than a payment method.
- The conversion is not anonymous. Every marketplace here that publishes a verification policy requires one, and CoinCola caps unverified accounts at 100 US dollars.
- The cost is a discount to face value. CoinCola publishes indicative bands, 80% to 92% on an Amazon US card and 60% to 82% on Google Play, so the haircut runs from about 8% to about 40%.
- Paxful, named on most guides to this subject, has shut down operations, and its co-founder pleaded guilty to a federal anti-money-laundering conspiracy in July 2024.
- A Binance Gift Card is a prepaid crypto voucher funded from a Binance account, not a retail card you buy in a shop.
- Giving a card number and PIN to a stranger is the moment the money is gone, and checking a balance on the issuer’s own site is a different act entirely.
Gift Cards as a Payment Method for Crypto
An unwanted gift card is a real problem: value you hold that you cannot spend where you want to. That is the legitimate reason people ask this question.
Read Also: Understanding the Monthly Limit on Crypto Cards
Types of Gift Cards
Retail gift cards are issued by a chain such as Amazon or Walmart and are spendable only there. Prepaid Visa and Mastercard gift cards work anywhere those networks are accepted. Digital gift cards are the same thing delivered by email or text.
A fourth category gets misfiled constantly. Binance’s own page defines a Binance Gift Card as “a prepaid crypto voucher that can be used for a variety of use cases, including crypto deposit and withdrawal on Binance, crypto transfer and loyalty rewards”.
It is funded from crypto you already hold and redeemed inside Binance, so it is a way of moving crypto rather than of acquiring it.
What It Actually Costs You
This is the question the whole transaction turns on, and it is worth being blunt about the answer.
A gift card converts at a discount to its face value, and for someone selling their own card that discount is the entire cost. It is the gap between the number printed on the card and the crypto that reaches your wallet.
CoinCola does publish the size of that gap. Its own gift card page, read 28 September 2026, lists Amazon US at 80% to 92% of face value, Google Play at 60% to 82%, iTunes and Apple at 70% to 85%, Steam Wallet at 65% to 80% and Visa gift cards at 70% to 88%.
So a 100 dollar Amazon US card is being quoted at a haircut of 8 to 20 per cent, and a Google Play card at 18 to 40 per cent. CoinCola flags its own numbers: “Rates fluctuate based on buyer demand. All rates above are indicative, check live offers for real-time pricing.”
Prestmit publishes nothing comparable. Its rate page carries a live calculator, warns that rates shift frequently and must be confirmed immediately before you transact, and shows no figures to a plain reader.
Its sell page says only that “Our rates are always up to date in line with market trends”. Four addresses were tried: prestmit.io, /rates, /sell-gift-card and /gift-card-rate-calculator, which 404s.
Treat every band as indicative, because that is what the operator calls it. Get the live quote in the platform’s own chat before you release anything, and walk away if it changes.
One fee does exist alongside the discount, and it falls on the other side. CoinCola’s announcement of a 4% gift card trading fee from 1 January 2024 says it applies “only to vendors, while those actively selling gift cards will continue to enjoy 0 trading fees”.
Where You Can Actually Do This
| Platform | What it does | Identity check | Payout | Rate published in advance? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CoinCola | Marketplace for redeeming or selling gift cards for crypto | Mandatory, with unverified accounts capped at 100 US dollars | Crypto | Indicative bands per brand; live offers govern |
| Prestmit | Gift card to cash or crypto exchange for Nigeria and Ghana | Account required | Naira, cedis, USD, BTC, LTC, DOGE, USDT | Live calculator only, no fixed rate |
| Binance P2P | General peer-to-peer market, not a gift card desk | Mandatory for all new users | Crypto | Set by each advertiser |
| Paxful | Its withdrawal site says it has shut down; its main site still markets trades. Do not use | Tiered KYC when the marketplace was reachable | Withdrawals only | None published |
CoinCola does what this page describes: “Redeem or sell gift cards from global brands for crypto instantly”. It says it serves more than sixty countries and names Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana.
Its verification rule is the number most guides omit: “Unverified accounts can trade up to $100 USD.”
Prestmit is a Nigeria and Ghana service, paying out in naira and cedis alongside crypto, so if you are reading this elsewhere it is probably not for you.
Binance runs a peer-to-peer market where advertisers set their payment methods. It is not a gift card desk.
Binance’s own verification rule applies first: “All new users are required to complete [Verified] to access Binance products and service offerings, including cryptocurrency deposits and trades.” Its P2P rules also require the paying account to match your registered name.
Paxful is the entry to be careful about, because its main site still reads “Buy bitcoins instantly”. Its own withdrawal property at withdraw.paxful.com carries the headline “Paxful Has Shut Down Operations: What You Need to Know”.
The US Department of Justice announced on 8 July 2024 that co-founder and former chief technology officer Artur Schaback pleaded guilty to conspiring to fail to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering programme, having “marketed Paxful as a platform that did not require KYC” and filed no suspicious activity reports.
BitValve appears on many lists here and is not recommended. Its site serves navigation and a price calculator but no marketplace, and no page reached mentions gift cards. Five addresses were tried, including support.bitvalve.com, which 404s, and its blog, which is still posting. No closure notice appears anywhere, so nothing here says it has shut down.
Read Also: Guide to Crypto Card Issuing Platforms for Startups
Steps to Buy Cryptocurrency With a Gift Card
Choosing a Platform
Pick a marketplace that publishes an escrow process, a dispute route and a verification policy, and check which brands it accepts first.
Checking the Balance, and Who You Give Numbers To
Two different actions get confused here, and the confusion is expensive.
Checking a balance means going to the issuer’s own site, the address printed on the card itself, and entering the number there. That is the only place you should ever type those digits outside a trade you started.
Handing the number and PIN to a counterparty is the trade itself. It transfers the value permanently, and it is the act the FTC describes as the moment of loss.
So it belongs inside a platform’s escrow flow with a named, verified buyer, never in a chat or a call with somebody who contacted you first.
Completing the Transaction
Confirm the rate, the crypto amount and the receiving wallet address before you release anything. Once the card’s value has moved it does not come back: crypto payments are not reversible, and neither is a redeemed gift card.
Considerations and Risks
- Exchange rates: you will receive less crypto than the face value, and that gap is the price of the transaction.
- Irreversibility: once a gift card is redeemed the transaction cannot be undone, and if you have been defrauded there is usually no recourse through the platform.
- Issuer terms: most issuers restrict resale, and a card can be voided after a trade settles, which is how the buyer on the other side loses.
- Provenance: a card is only yours if you bought it or were given it. A code someone read to you over the phone is not, and selling it is a separate problem from being scammed.
- Platform security: if the marketplace is breached you can lose funds or have your documents exposed.
What the Law Asks of You
What a platform asks for and what the law requires of you are different questions. Tax, sanctions and reporting duties attach to the disposal itself, whether or not anybody checked your documents, and sanctions have no minimum amount.
Pseudonymous is not anonymous. A public ledger keeps every transaction permanently, so an address later tied to your name makes its whole history readable backwards. Our explainer on how KYC safeguards crypto transactions sets out what those checks are for.
Treat any permissive threshold you read elsewhere as the dangerous kind of stale fact. Take the wording from the provider’s own current page and note the date you read it, because a cap that was true last year is not a permission today.
Alternatives to Gift Cards for Buying Crypto
If the goal is to own some crypto rather than to clear a drawer, the conventional rails are cheaper and far easier to price.
Bank transfers move money straight from your account to an exchange, usually at lower cost than a gift card conversion, though international transfers take longer.
Debit and credit cards are instant, with fees published up front rather than hidden in a rate. Our guide to how to buy cryptocurrency with a debit card covers the steps involved.
Peer-to-peer marketplaces let you pay a person directly using local rails, the same mechanism without the bearer instrument in the middle. Whether that is permitted where you live is covered in our guide to whether peer-to-peer crypto trading is legal.
Once you hold crypto, spending it is a separate question, and UPay, whose blog this is, sells a card of its own, so read this as the publisher describing its own product.
UPay issues virtual cards through partner institutions on the Visa network, funded from your UPay wallet. That wallet holds crypto rather than a stored fiat balance, and conversion happens at the point of purchase.
Card eligibility depends on your nationality. UPay publishes the current restricted list in its Help Center and revises it, so check the current version before applying.
FAQs
Is buying crypto with a gift card anonymous?
No. The card may be a bearer instrument, but every marketplace here that publishes a verification policy requires one. Binance verifies all new users and CoinCola caps unverified accounts at 100 US dollars. Prestmit publishes no policy, which is not the same as not having one.
How much will I lose on a 100 dollar card?
On CoinCola’s own indicative bands, roughly 8 to 20 dollars on an Amazon US card and 18 to 40 on Google Play. Get the live number in the platform’s chat before you release the code, and treat a quote that moves as a reason to stop.
Is it legal?
Selling a card you own is generally lawful, though most issuers restrict resale and your tax duties apply to the disposal. Selling a card you were told to buy by a stranger is a different matter.
Which gift cards are accepted?
It varies by platform and changes. CoinCola claims “300+ gift card brands” and names Amazon, Walmart, Apple, Steam, Google Play and Vanilla. Check the platform’s current list on the day you trade rather than any roundup, including this one.
Someone is waiting on the phone while I do this. What should I do?
Hang up. Urgency defines this scam, and no legitimate payment has ever required you to stay on a call while you read numbers off a card.
