CoinGate Gift Cards vs CryptoRefills: Which to Use

Summary: CoinGate Gift Cards accepts around 90 cryptocurrencies with no crypto fee and lists over 6,000 brands, against the 50-plus coins and roughly 4,000 brands CryptoRefills cites. CryptoRefills has built outward differently, reaching more countries and expanding into booking flights and hotels directly, which a gift card catalogue does not replicate. The right one depends on whether you are buying a brand or booking a trip.

• CoinGate Gift Cards lists around 90 cryptocurrencies against the 50-plus CryptoRefills cites, with no crypto fee.
• The brand catalogue is larger too, at over 6,000 against roughly 4,000.
• CryptoRefills covers more countries and books travel directly rather than through cards.
• Published figures for CryptoRefills vary by source, so treat any single number with caution.

Of the platforms that compete directly in this space, CryptoRefills is the one that has drifted furthest from being purely a gift card shop. That makes the comparison less about which catalogue is bigger and more about what you are actually trying to buy.

Two Different Expansion Paths

CryptoRefills was founded in 2018 and is based in Amsterdam. It started, like everyone here, selling gift cards and mobile top-ups for crypto. Where it went next was travel: it now sells flights and hotel bookings directly rather than only as gift cards for travel brands.

CoinGate Gift Cards went the other way, deepening the gift card catalogue and widening the list of accepted coins. Neither choice is wrong. They simply produce different products, and the comparison below is really about which expansion is useful to you.

Coin Support: A Clear Gap

CoinGate Gift Cards lists around 90 cryptocurrencies. When CryptoRefills announced its integration with KuCoin Pay in mid-2025, the figure quoted was support for more than 50 cryptocurrencies alongside 4,000-plus gift cards and mobile top-ups across 140-plus carriers.

Fifty coins is not a narrow list, and it covers every asset most people hold. The gap matters at the same place it always does: the long tail. If your holding sits outside the top fifty, CoinGate Gift Cards takes it without an exchange step, and avoiding one conversion usually saves more than any difference in card pricing.

Catalogue Size, With a Caveat

CoinGate Gift Cards markets over 6,000 brands. CryptoRefills figures vary considerably depending on where you look: its own joint announcement with KuCoin cites 4,000-plus gift cards, while third-party directories quote anywhere from 1,500 to 5,000 brands.

That spread is worth being honest about rather than picking whichever number flatters a conclusion. The defensible statement is that CoinGate Gift Cards is ahead on its own published count, and that CryptoRefills numbers should be checked against the site rather than against a directory listing.

As always, the count matters less than whether your specific brand is stocked. A niche category like eyewear, somewhere such as MOOGLASSES, is the sort of thing a larger catalogue picks up and a smaller one does not.

Country Coverage Goes the Other Way

CryptoRefills states availability in more than 150 countries and territories. CoinGate Gift Cards serves 90-plus. If you are outside that coverage, nothing else on this page matters, because the wider catalogue and coin list are unreachable.

Separately, where you buy is not the same as where a code works. Region restrictions attach to the card itself, so a broad-coverage platform does not make a US-only card redeemable in Europe.

Travel Is Where CryptoRefills Genuinely Differs

This is the real distinction and it deserves stating without hedging. CryptoRefills sells flights across hundreds of airlines and access to a very large hotel inventory, paid in crypto, as a booking rather than as a gift card. If your goal is to pay for a trip with crypto, that is a different and often better mechanism than buying a travel brand's gift card and redeeming it.

The gift card route still has its uses here. A hotel card from a specific operator such as Ocean Hotels can be bought now and used later, or given to someone else, which a booking cannot. But for booking a specific flight on a specific date, a direct booking engine wins.

Networks and Fees

CryptoRefills has been unusually early on payment networks, adopting Lightning early and being among the first to take Ethereum layer two payments through Polygon and Arbitrum, plus fast-finality chains. For anyone who cares about paying over a cheap network rather than mainnet, that is a genuine engineering advantage.

It matters because the network you choose often costs more than anything the platform charges. How gas fees work explains why a mainnet transfer can add several dollars to a small purchase while a layer two adds almost nothing.

On the platform side rather than the network side, CoinGate Gift Cards charges no fee for paying in crypto and publishes an average processing time of around 63 seconds. Compare any checkout total against the card's face value before paying, on either site, since that single check reveals more than any published fee schedule.

Digital Goods Suit Both Equally

For straightforward digital purchases neither platform has an edge worth arguing about. A one-off software licence from a vendor like TunePat is a fixed amount, instantly delivered, with no region complication, and both will handle it fine. Decide on coin support and catalogue instead.

Verification

The CoinGate Gift Cards terms state that verification may be required on purchases above 700 euros, depending on the payment method and processor. CryptoRefills does not publish a directly comparable threshold, and requirements on travel bookings in particular can differ from those on gift cards, since a named passenger is involved either way.

If minimal disclosure matters to you, check the current policy on whichever you choose rather than relying on a comparison article. What verification involves is worth knowing before it becomes a deciding factor.

Catalogue and Coins, or Reach and Travel

The split is unusually clean, and for buying gift cards it favours CoinGate Gift Cards: more coins accepted, a larger published catalogue, no crypto fee and a documented processing time. That covers most purchases. CryptoRefills is the right tool in two specific cases, booking a flight or hotel with crypto, or buying from one of the countries beyond CoinGate's coverage, and in both it does something a gift card catalogue cannot.

One practical note either way: the published figures for CryptoRefills vary widely across sources, so verify anything decisive on the site itself. To check the catalogue against your own coin and country, browse the gift card catalogue.