How to Pay with Cryptocurrency on Amazon

Amazon doesn’t accept Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency directly, but that shouldn’t stop you from using your holdings to buy things from the retailer of record. Unfortunately, there are some hurdles to paying Amazon with crypto. This usually involves converting your crypto to fiat currency before using it for the purchase with a virtual or plastic debit card. Another popular option is to fund Amazon gift cards using Bitcoin, Cardano, Ethereum, Litecoin, or whatever other cryptocurrency you own.

We can hope that someday soon the retail behemoth will wake up and join the new decentralized economy. Until then, we’re here to help you navigate the waters of paying for those Amazon deals with your mounting (or dwindling) cryptocurrency reserves. Browse the options below to see which best suits your Amazon buying needs.

BitPay

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BitPay offers a payment app and a debit card that you can fund with your cryptocurrency—including not only Bitcoin, but also Dai, Dogecoin, Ethereum, USD Coin, and XRP. The app is available for Android, iOS, and Windows 10. It also serves as a cryptocurrency wallet, which gives it the advantage over an online exchange like Coinbase. A major one is that your account assets stay on your local device, so you can’t lose them if someone hacks the online service that holds your crypto. That said, it’s a cinch to connect your Coinbase account to BitPay to fund the local wallet. Alternatively, you can buy crypto directly in BitPay with a credit or debit card.

The Amazon gift card option is prominently displayed on the app’s home page and I purchased one without incurring a fee. There’s even a Redeem Now option that takes you right to the Amazon website and automatically applies the gift card code to your balance.

Bitrefill

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Bitrefill claims that it “allow(s) anyone to live on cryptocurrency more easily.” Like some of the other options here, it lets you buy gift cards with your cryptocurrency. Buying an Amazon gift card using Bitrefill earns you a 1% reward in your account. You can fund the card with Bitcoin, Dash, Dogecoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, or Tether, using the standard QR scanning or address entry for your wallet. There’s also an option to link a Coinbase account, though you may prefer to keep that separate for security. Paying Amazon with Bitrefill is not as streamlined a process as with BitPay or Purse, though you can copy the gift code with a click and head over to Amazon armed with that.

Blockcard

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Blockcard offers a Visa debit card that you can fund with your cryptocurrency. You can fund your account with BAT, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Dai, Ethereum, Litecoin, Stellar Lumen, Tether, USD Coin, or Uniswap.

You get a choice of virtual or plastic cards, and, soon, metal cards. The virtual one is free, but you need to deposit $10 to get the plastic one. Blockcard charges no transaction fees either for deposits or conversions, but there are fees(Opens in a new window) for some things, such as PIN or ACH transactions ($1) and ATM withdrawals ($3).

Once you’ve got your funded card, simply use it on Amazon as you would any other debit card. Blockcard automatically converts the cryptocurrency using its Ternio (TERN) crypto.

Cash App

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The Cash App (which comes from the people that make Square payment processors) lets you easily purchase Bitcoin; but unfortunately, it doesn’t support any other cryptocurrencies yet. You can even earn Bitcoin on Cash Card purchases. For example, one promotion was for a 5% bonus in Bitcoin if you buy groceries with the card. To send or receive Bitcoin on the standard blockchain, you need to verify your identity with a driver’s license and selfie. (So much for anonymity in cryptocurrency.)

One you’ve earned a pile of Bitcoin in the Cash App, you can choose Sell, which dumps the amount you specify into your Cash App balance. After that, to buy something on Amazon, you just use the debit card info on the shopping site. In the app, you have to hit the three-dot overflow menu and enable Show Cash Card Info and type in your PIN to see the number, expiration date, and CVV number. If you have a plastic Cash card, just enter the info from that.

I should note that I’m not a huge fan of apps like Cash App and Venmo that let people display payment-receiving IDs, because they all too often lead to illegitimate uses like criminals paying you with funds from stolen credit cards, resulting in big legal headaches. I went through the arduous process of canceling my Venmo account because of all the illegitimate requests and remittances of money to it.

Cash App Review

Crypto.com

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Crypto.com lets you pay with cryptocurrency not only on Amazon, but also at eBay and Walmart. The company offers a Visa card with up to 8% cashback rewards. New York State residents, however, are out of luck, as they are with many digital currency benefits, thanks to its restrictive regulations. For those outside New York, Crypto.com lets them fund accounts with about 1,300 different types of crypto coins—any with a market cap over $1 million. Paying Amazon with your Crypto.com card is just like using any debit card. If you maintain a balance of about $1,100 worth of Crypo.com’s CRO coin in your account, you can earn from 2.5% to 10% rewards on purchases, and even have your $12.99-per-month Amazon Prime membership reimbursed.

PayPal

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Though PayPal famously, but tentatively, joined the decentralized currency movement, you can’t pay with it using crypto. PayPal only lets you buy a very limited set of cryptocurrencies—Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, and Litecoin—and you can’t use it directly in any way. You can only convert it back to your account balance. You can then use this balance for your Amazon purchases. Other exchanges like Coinbase let you easily transfer assets using QR codes or your wallet address. At least you can buy some crypto on PayPal, convert it back to dollars, and use that to buy on Amazon.

PayPal Review

Purse

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Purse is the most Amazon-focused option here and one of the easiest to set up. Purse gives you a 15% discount on Amazon when you shop with Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash. It features a search bar for you to enter a product you want or even an Amazon product URL. Although Purse unfortunately adds a small fee to your order, it came out to less than the discount for my test order. Once you get to the checkout, you can simply scan the QR code on the last page to add your cryptocurrency to the account to pay for the order.

Shopping.io

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Shopping.io lets you purchase not only from Amazon, but also from Walmart and eBay using your choice of over 100 cryptocurrencies. If you hold a goodly sum of the company’s SPI tokens in your Shopping.io account (starting at $3,000 worth), you get up to 10% discounts when shopping on Amazon, eBay, or Walmart. When paying for your purchase on Shopping.io, unless you’re using SPI coin or another somewhat obscure “Partnership token” currency, you have to go through a third-party gateway: Crypto.com, Utrust, or CoinPayments.net. This makes the process more complicated than with some of the other options included in this roundup.

Beyond Amazon, and The Future of Payments

Although Amazon doesn’t accept direct cryptocurrency payments, several other shopping sites do accept the new form of money, including Fancy, Microsoft, NewEgg, and OverStock. Or maybe you prefer shopping at De Louvois(Opens in a new window), where you can always pay with Bitcoin, Ethereum, and more…assuming you’re in the market for a Bentley, Lamborghini, or maybe some upscale real estate.