Gyft, twelve years on from being the answer

For a long stretch of the 2010s, "how do I spend bitcoin" had one popular answer, and it was Gyft. The site launched in 2012, was among the first retailers of any kind to take the currency, and was bought by the payments giant First Data on 12 August 2014 — which merged with Fiserv in 2019, so Gyft now sits inside one of the largest payment companies in the world.

Its bitcoin page still says so plainly: "Use Bitcoin to shop for hundreds of gift cards. Instant delivery. No fees." and "We love Bitcoin! In fact, we were one of the first places to accept Bitcoin."

Is Gyft still around, and is it legit? Yes to both. It is a corporate-owned gift card retailer with hundreds of brands, and the codes arrive. Worth knowing when you plan around it: the site's footer still reads "©2024 Gyft, Inc.", so it is a maintained product rather than an actively developed one, and the coin list is narrow next to newer shops.

"No fees" and "no discount" are the same sentence

Gyft charges nothing on top, which is a real advantage over shops that add a markup or a network surcharge. It also does not sell below face value, and cannot: a $50 card is $50 of bitcoin.

That is the whole economics of the category. A retailer buying store credit wholesale sells it at par and lives on the spread; nobody in that chain has a reason to hand the margin to you. The absence of a fee is not the presence of a discount.

Where a real discount comes from

Not from a retailer, but from a person. Somebody holds $300 of balance at a store they will never visit again. For them, $250 in something spendable beats $300 they will not use. That gap is the only genuine discount available on retail goods, and the reason it usually goes unclaimed is that neither side wants to go first.

FlipGift is that trade with escrow in the middle. You post a product link from a US store; the balance holder places the order and ships it to you; your stablecoins are held until you confirm delivery. You pay 8–40% under the store's price — settled deals so far average 25% off — and no code is ever issued, so nothing can be region-locked, mistyped or drained.

Use Gyft when you want a code from a big-brand retailer with no surcharge, or when you are buying digital credit. Use an escrowed order when the goods are physical, American, and the price is the point. How that works →

Facts about Gyft above were checked against gyft.com on 1 September 2026; the First Data acquisition date is from the companies' 2014 announcement.

Other routes, compared the same way

Bitrefill · BitPay · eGifter · CoinGate · Coinsbee · CoinCards · CryptoRefills · NoOnes · Lolli · Fold · Purse.io · Paxful

One page per service, each saying where that service is the better tool than an escrowed order. How ours works →