Prepaid Bitcoin, a company from Canada, uses pre-paid cards to sell bitcoins. Maximum balance on a card is $100.

 
According to the company’s site customers can buy cards with $10, $20, $50 or $100 worth of bitcoins. The exact amount is calculated using a variable exchange rate. This Monday the rate was $571 while CoinDesk bitcoin price index  was around $253.

Each card has a unique account number and a PIN. To activate it, users need to scratch the protective layer off the PIN and enter the code  in a special form available on the website.

The company claims that bitcoins are available within “minutes of activation, in rare cases up to a few hours”. The company advises to use other wallets and services to spend bitcoins:

“We recommend that you transfer your bitcoins to the secure platform of your choice. This might be a secure third-party website, your own offline encrypted files, or you can print and store your information physically. Choose the method that you feel most comfortable with, and that will keep your bitcoins safe.”

The creators of “Prepaid Bitcoins” are ready to ship the card internationally. The price for the international delivery of one card is around $5.00.

The company began to sell the cards in April, 2014 and did not publish any report yet. Interestingly enough, another site located in Philippines sells bitcoins using prepaid cards on the very similar conditions.

The currency of choice is not American dollars, but Philippine peso. The company named Prepadibitcoin.ph sells cards with 200, 500 and 1,000 Philippine peso worth of bitcoins. As opposed to Prepaid Bitcoin, Prepaidbitcoin.ph internal exchange rate corresponds to the CoinDesk exchange index.

Alexey Tereshchenko