Refills

Suppose you have earned some crypto by yield farming, liquidity pools, staking or from an increased price and you would like to spend your crypto profits. Unfortunately, most online and retail stores don’t accept Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies as a payment method. Usually, you would have to convert your crypto to fiat via a crypto exchange, send it to your bank account and then buy products from a retailer. This process can be time consuming and costly; cash out limits, exchange fees and waiting for the bank transfer to be completed.

However, there is a clever workaround which is simpler, faster and cheaper. Cryptorefills allows you to buy gift cards with crypto by transferring your crypto to their wallet address in return for digital gift cards. You can then use your gift cards instead of fiat or credit card to buy a product.

A few words on gift cards

Typically, you give a gift card to someone as a present. The gift card contains a prepaid amount of money issued by a brand. So let’s say you have a gift card worth of $50. You can then use it online via the retailer’s website or directly in a shop. It depends on the gift card you are buying. Digital gift cards used online typically have a pin code that needs to be filled in on the retailer’s e-commerce site. Gift cards can be used at the retailer’s store by scanning their barcode. You can also print the barcode of your giftcard or keep a copy of it on your phone and show it to the cashier when you pay. What I find pretty neat about them is that you can buy them anonymously.

Cryptorefills

Back in 2020, Cryptorefills were limited in what they had to offer. They had some mobile phone prepaid cards and few gift cards. Lately, the amount of products they are offering has been growing exponentially: You can find nearly every type of gift card in their webshop.

In their early days, Cryptorefills only supported payments with Bitcoin. However, now you can buy their gift cards with Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dash, ETH and stablecoins like Tether, USDC, Dai. What I like about their payment system is that you can choose between various Layer 2 solutions and networks: Let’s say you pay want to pay with Bitcoin, try using Lightning. Prefer to pay with ETH? Use Avalanche or Polygon. By doing so, you can decrease the transaction-fees and the transactions will be much faster.

The team behind the service seems also very solid and active too. They have recently added the Avalanche and Polygon network to their list of payment options. They also have a high customer rating on Trustpilot.

So, the idea behind Cryptorefills is that they offer you gift cards from thousands of brands which you can buy with your crypto. You can then use those gift cards as to buy whatever you want without the need to convert your crypto to fiat. Pretty clever.

How to use Cryptorefills service

The first thing you need to decide is how you want to access their service. I prefer to use their app on my phone because it’s easier than going to their website via the browser. If you are a browser guy or gal, you can visit their website cryptorefills.com, it’s very user-friendly. Once you land on their home page, you can easily see the categories and brands. For example, if you want to buy something at Amazon, you can find the brand under the ecommerce category.

  1. Once you have decided which brand you would like a gift card from, click on it.
  2. On the product page, choose which cryptocurrency you want to pay with and the amount of Fiat you want your gift card to be charged with.
  3. You will now be redirected to your Cart. Cryptorefills will ask you again what crypto would like to pay with. After choosing your cryptocurrency payment method, you can also choose a network. For Bitcoin, you choose to pay with Lightning, or for USDT you choose to pay with the Avalanche network. Then, click on “proceed to checkout”.
  4. Cryptorefills will ask if you have already have an account on their website or if you would like to pay anonymously. If you choose to pay anonymously, you need to enter an email address so they can send the gift card to that address, which is usually a PIN code but can also be a barcode depending on the brand of your product. If you do have an account, you will receive Cryptorefills points whenever you buy a product. You can redeem these points for crypto vouchers in the ‘Redeem’ section of their website.
  5. After logging into your account / filling in your E-Mail address you will be redirected to their payment page. The page shows you the wallet address that you need to send your crypto to. Once you have transferred your crypto, you will receive your product via your E-Mail address.
  6. Congratulations! You have successfully placed an order via CryptoRefills. You can now use your gift card to buy products via retailers.

Conclusion

Once you get used to Cryptorefills, you realize that it is much easier, cheaper and faster than selling your crypto to fiat and transferring it to your bank account. Cryptorefills allows you to buy gift cards directly with your crypto within a few minutes and use it on whatever you would like to buy.

This post is sponsored by Cryptorefills