Selling Gift Cards for own website

[Jave]

Hello,

I'm about to publish a new website which offers virtual currency for users to buy to use on my site for various services. Right now I'm planning to use Stripe as a payment gateway but as many know they are not reliable and can shut down your account anytime.

As an alternative I thought about selling Gift Cards for my own website which users can buy over a 3rd party platform which doesn't rely on Stripe (or other payment gateways) and exchange them for the virtual currency on my site.

Does someone has recommendations or ideas of platforms I can use to sell those?

 

[frozen_yoda]

Hello,

I'm about to publish a new website which offers virtual currency for users to buy to use on my site for various services. Right now I'm planning to use Stripe as a payment gateway but as many know they are not reliable and can shut down your account anytime.

As an alternative I thought about selling Gift Cards for my own website which users can buy over a 3rd party platform which doesn't rely on Stripe (or other payment gateways) and exchange them for the virtual currency on my site.

Does someone has recommendations or ideas of platforms I can use to sell those?

Gift Cards to your website? Unless if you're a big retailer that sounds like a mistake.

Personally, I would never buy a gift card to use on another site. If buying one for someone else I might from Amazon, BestBuy, Visa, etc. -- possibly a local store I knew they visited, but probably not.

Stripe is good. Plenty of others. Even authorize.net is pretty good - I never had an issue with them.

Are you selling shady services or why are you afraid of using Stripe? Not that they don't have enough merit on their own, but most YC companies use/partner with Stripe. They have one of the best C Corp setups (although they highly recommended SV Bank lol)

 

[Jave]

Nothing shady, but could be considered high risk. Yeah the gift cards would be a temporary back up plan just in case i get in trouble with stripe and only until i implemented a new gateway to this point.

I thought about opening a business seller account on amazon / ebay for this reason but not quite sure if they would allow selling gift cards

 

[BlogPro]

Unless the gift cards are available at a significant discount and you are one of the most sought after stores - I don't see how this would work?

What do you envision the user story here is?

// Normal Scenario

John visits your site. He pays via stripe. Order is fulfilled.

// Stripe suspends you.

Jane visits your site. You tell her to goto Giftcards.com and buy a Gift card from there to your site. Then come back to your site, create an account and redeem that card.

She buys a $25 gift card, buys something worth $17. What happens to the pending $8?

--

I mean you'd have to REALLY BADLY want something to go to a website that is unable to process payments, then go to another website buy a gift card and come back here to redeem.

 

[Jave]

Unless the gift cards are available at a significant discount and you are one of the most sought after stores - I don't see how this would work?

What do you envision the user story here is?

// Normal Scenario

John visits your site. He pays via stripe. Order is fulfilled.

// Stripe suspends you.

Jane visits your site. You tell her to goto Giftcards.com and buy a Gift card from there to your site. Then come back to your site, create an account and redeem that card.

She buys a $25 gift card, buys something worth $17. What happens to the pending $8?

--

I mean you'd have to REALLY BADLY want something to go to a website that is unable to process payments, then go to another website buy a gift card and come back here to redeem.

It wont be that complicated. Remember I don't sell any physical but only a virtual currency users can use on my site.

__


Normal Behaviour:

Registered user tops up his account with e.g. 50 virtual points, he gets redirected to stripe payment page and after succesful payment he gets redirected back to my site and his bought points are added to his account.

Gift Card Behaviour:

Instead of getting redirected to Stripe Payment page he gets redirected to 3rd Platform (Let's say for example Amazon) where he can buy 50 virtual points gift card. After succesful payment ge gets an auto email with gift card code and the link to a page on my site where he puts this code in and virtual points will get added to his account automatically.

__

I know it's not the optimal solution but it should only work like this in an "emergency" situation anyway.

So still wondering if you know of platforms i could use for listing the giftcards? Ideally without much fees of course.

 

[frozen_yoda]

It wont be that complicated. Remember I don't sell any physical but only a virtual currency users can use on my site.

__


Normal Behaviour:

Registered user tops up his account with e.g. 50 virtual points, he gets redirected to stripe payment page and after succesful payment he gets redirected back to my site and his bought points are added to his account.

Gift Card Behaviour:

Instead of getting redirected to Stripe Payment page he gets redirected to 3rd Platform (Let's say for example Amazon) where he can buy 50 virtual points gift card. After succesful payment ge gets an auto email with gift card code and the link to a page on my site where he puts this code in and virtual points will get added to his account automatically.

__

I know it's not the optimal solution but it should only work like this in an "emergency" situation anyway.

So still wondering if you know of platforms i could use for listing the giftcards? Ideally without much fees of course.

Why not have a backup payment processor if you think there may be issues?

If you still want to go with gift cards that's up to you, but I definitely think you will be turning away users.

Good luck.

 

[ninomino19]

Why not to add crypto as a backup plus how you will make sure of the cards code? You will use them? Then are you sure amazon won't block you?

 

[Niel01]

You should check out BuySellVouchers marketplace, this platform offers good discount for buyers

 

[frodo92]

Have you found a solution to do that?