About FlipGift
Updated October 19, 2026
FlipGift is built and run by one person: me, Kirill Novikov, based in Riga, Latvia. I built the escrow system, I review the disputes the automatic checks can’t settle, and the guides on this site are published under my name. If something here is wrong, it is my mistake and [email protected] reaches me.
Why I built it
For years I bought and sold gift cards on peer-to-peer platforms like Paxful and NoOnes. The trade there happened in a chat: the deal opened, you sent the card number and PIN, and that was the whole protection. Sometimes the buyer spent the balance straight away and said the card had arrived empty. It then went to a dispute, and moderators had no way to see who had actually spent the money, so they sided with whoever had the bigger reputation. Accounts with a lot of reputation learned they could get away with it. I lost money that way, and decided the model itself had to change, not the moderators.
The big resale sites at the top of Google work differently, but have the same weak point. They buy your card and resell the code, and the original owner still knows that code. If the owner spends it, the next buyer gets an empty card; if the next buyer drains it and complains, an honest seller can be blamed for something they didn’t do. Any model where a card code changes hands has that hole, and their review pages have plenty of complaints of exactly this kind. Meanwhile, sites that simply collect a card number and PIN and never pay out sit right beside them.
So FlipGift doesn’t move codes at all. The seller keeps the card and uses it to pay for a buyer’s order at the store; the buyer’s money waits in escrow until the parcel arrives. Nobody can drain a card they never saw, and a dispute is about a parcel with a tracking number — something that can be checked — rather than one person’s word against another’s. How escrow works has the details, and Is FlipGift legit? has the safeguards.
How FlipGift is run
- Who: Kirill Novikov, an individual. FlipGift is not a registered company yet; I’ll incorporate it once it earns enough to need one, and this page will say so.
- Where: Riga, Latvia. The marketplace serves US stores and US shoppers.
- Money: self-funded from my own pocket, no investors. FlipGift earns the platform fee (5% of a deal, half from each side) and the withdrawal fee, and nothing else — no ads, no selling data.
- Contact: [email protected], or a support ticket if you have an account. More on the contact page.
- Elsewhere: Kirill Novikov on X and reviews on Trustpilot.
My own orders on FlipGift
I use FlipGift as a buyer. These are all my orders that had completed by October 19, 2026: the store, what I bought, the store’s price, and what I actually paid including the buyer fee. Sellers’ names and my address are left out.
| Store | Item | Store price | I paid | Saved | Ordered → delivered |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CVS | Nordic Naturals Omega fish oil, 120 ct | $53.99 | $41.00 | 24% | Aug 11 → Aug 12 |
| GameStop | Sony DualSense controller | $81.98 | $62.25 | 24% | Aug 16 → Aug 19 |
| Dillard's | Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 glasses | $459.00 | $348.56 | 24% | Aug 18 → Aug 25 |
| DSW | New Balance 410 v9 trail shoes | $59.50 | $45.18 | 24% | Aug 19 → Aug 24 |
| Wayfair | 400-thread-count fitted sheet | $89.98 | $68.33 | 24% | Aug 20 → Aug 25 |
| Best Buy | Google Fitbit Air | $99.99 | $75.93 | 24% | Aug 21 → Aug 28 |
| Best Buy | Apple Watch Series 11, 42 mm | $384.99 | $292.35 | 24% | Aug 25 → Aug 28 |
| eBay | Coach accordion wallet | $118.00 | $84.67 | 28% | Aug 31 → Sep 4 |
| Walmart | Davines sea salt scrub | $17.00 | $13.07 | 23% | Sep 3 → Sep 8 |
| Apple | AirPods 5 | $129.00 | $107.10 | 17% | Sep 21 → Sep 28 |
| Amazon | AirPods 5 with charging case | $155.99 | $126.31 | 19% | Sep 26 → Sep 28 |
| 11 orders | $1,649.42 | $1,264.75 | 23% | ||
More of my orders are on their way as I write this. Many more never started: on a young marketplace an order often expires because no seller with a balance at that store picks it up in time. When that happens nothing is charged — the money goes back to the balance it came from.
What went wrong on my orders, and what changed
Escrow is only worth something if it holds when a seller cheats. These are the cases where it was tested with my own money. In every one of them the money stayed in escrow and came back to me.
Deal #20 (Talbots, August): the store cancelled, and the system blamed the seller
The seller paid for my order with their gift card and called Talbots to unblock it, and then the item went out of stock. They reported it in the deal chat; 25 minutes later an automatic timer marked them as "did not ship" and gave them a strike. My money was still in escrow, so I got it back in full — but the strike was our mistake, not theirs. I removed it by hand, restored their listings, and fixed the admin tool that had made undoing the step so hard.
Deal #26 (Walmart, August): "I ordered it" — without ordering
A seller registered the day before pressed "I ordered it" and uploaded, as proof, a photo of their own gift card with the PIN showing, plus a screenshot of our page. Nothing had been bought. The money never left escrow; the deal was rolled back and refunded. Since then, images that show a gift card number are stopped before they are saved, so a card code can no longer reach the other side through a proof upload.
Deal #112 (Amazon MacBook Air, September): a screenshot of our own page as "proof"
The seller pushed a $1,499 order all the way to "shipped" with no order behind it. The third "proof" was a screenshot of FlipGift’s own deal page, which shows the amount to spend and my address — and the automatic proof check took that as a match. I refunded the deal and changed the check: our deal page is now recognised as instructions, not an order confirmation.
Deal #203 (Nordstrom, October): a forged order confirmation
A brand-new seller sent an "order confirmation" whose order number was simply the product ID from the store link, dated before the deal even existed, plus a tracking number no carrier recognised. I opened a dispute, the $449 came back to my balance, and the account was banned. The proof check now flags exactly those two tells to me and to the dispute reviewer.
The full list of what can still go wrong — for buyers and for sellers — is on the risks page. I’d rather you read it before your first deal than after.
— Kirill Novikov, founder of FlipGift