Crypto gift cards, vouchers and promo codes

Search for crypto gift cards in the UK and you will find three unrelated things wearing the same label: the genuine act of giving someone cryptocurrency, prepaid voucher networks used to fund accounts with cash, and a long-running fraud that asks victims to buy retail gift cards and read out the codes.

They deserve to be separated, because the first is straightforward, the second is niche and expensive, and the third has taken a great deal of money out of Welsh households.

Actually giving someone crypto

There is no need for a special product. The simplest approach is to help the recipient open an account on a registered platform, then send them a small amount — or, if they already have a wallet, transfer directly to their address.

Doing it this way has real advantages over any packaged gift product. The recipient controls the asset from the beginning rather than redeeming a code from a business you both have to trust. They go through identity verification themselves, which is where the learning happens. And there is no third party between them and their money.

If they are completely new to the subject, the gift that actually helps is an hour of your time alongside the crypto: setting up two-factor authentication, explaining what a seed phrase is, and walking through our buying guide together. A twenty-pound Bitcoin gift to someone who then loses access to it has taught them the wrong lesson.

The tax position, which surprises people

HMRC treats gifting a cryptoasset to anyone other than a spouse or civil partner as a disposal at market value. You received nothing, and you may still have a chargeable gain.

A worked example. You bought 0.05 BTC three years ago for £900. You gift it to your nephew when it is worth £3,400. For tax purposes you have disposed of it for £3,400, producing a gain of £2,500 before any allowable costs. That sits against your £3,000 annual exempt amount, and if you have used the allowance elsewhere it is chargeable at 18% or 24% depending on your band.

Your nephew acquires the asset at £3,400, which becomes his base cost when he eventually disposes of it. Transfers between spouses and civil partners work differently — generally no gain, no loss, with the receiving partner inheriting the original base cost, which is why couples sometimes transfer assets before a sale to use both allowances.

Inheritance tax is a separate question, and cryptoassets do form part of an estate. If you are making substantial gifts, take proper advice. Our tax guide covers the capital gains mechanics.

Prepaid vouchers as a funding route

This is the second category, and it is a payment method rather than a gift. Paysafecash lets you generate a barcode at checkout and pay in cash at a retail outlet — the network covers roughly 28,000 UK PayPoint stores through a partnership with Paysafe. Paysafecard is the related prepaid voucher product, bought with cash and redeemed with a 16-digit PIN.

Some cryptoasset brokers accept these. Few exchanges do, and the pricing is generally poor — you are paying for the ability to fund an account without a bank, and that convenience is charged for.

Our view is that these are worth knowing about and rarely worth using. If you have any route to a bank account, that route is cheaper by a wide margin. If you genuinely have none, they are the least bad option — though opening a basic bank account would serve you better across your whole financial life, not just this. Our cash routes guide ranks all of the options.

Referral codes, welcome bonuses and promotions

Referral programmes are ordinary marketing, and plenty of registered firms run them. But UK rules are tighter than most people realise. Since 8 October 2023, the Financial Promotions regime has banned refer-a-friend incentives for qualifying cryptoasset promotions to UK consumers, alongside requiring prescribed risk warnings, a 24-hour cooling-off period for first-time investors and an appropriateness assessment.

The practical implication is useful. If a firm is offering you an aggressive sign-up bonus to promote crypto in the UK, that is a signal worth investigating rather than an opportunity. Either the offer falls outside the qualifying-promotion rules, or the firm is operating outside the regime — and the second explanation is common.

On comparison sites offering "exclusive discount codes", including in principle this one: treat them sceptically. We do not operate promo codes. Where we have a commercial relationship with a platform, it is disclosed in our editorial policy and it does not influence our rankings.

Retail gift cards and crypto: the grey area

There are services that let people trade retail gift cards for cryptocurrency, usually peer-to-peer. They are legal in themselves, and they are also a well-known channel for moving the proceeds of gift card fraud.

If you accept a gift card in exchange for crypto, you have no reliable way of knowing whether that card was bought legitimately or by a fraud victim who was told to buy it. The cards are frequently drained or cancelled once the fraud is reported, and you are the one holding a worthless code. Worse, you may find yourself part of a laundering chain you had no knowledge of.

We would not use these services and would not suggest anyone else does.

Better ideas for a crypto gift

Send a small amount directly to a wallet they control, along with a hardware wallet if the amount justifies it — a device costing £50 to £150 is a more useful present than the equivalent in coins for someone who is going to hold long term. Pay for an hour with an accountant who understands cryptoassets, if they are already holding and have never thought about tax. Or, least glamorously and most usefully, sit down with them and set the whole thing up properly, including the seed phrase backup they would otherwise never get round to.

None of those come in a card. All of them are worth more than one.