The partnership between
Coinbase and London-based startup
WeGift means that Coinbase customers in the EU and Australia can now make a direct withdrawal from their crypto balances onto e-gift cards, with no Coinbase withdrawal fees.
This coming just months after Coinbase
secured an e-money license from the U.K.'s Financial Conduct Authority.
Coindesk reported that, in 2013, Coinbase did something similar by partnering with a New York-based
eGifter to offer "crypto gift cards."
In a post on the Coinbase support site, the company
suggests that users look to eGifter or Gyft, another such service, to purchase gift cards.
Earlier, eGifter had stunned users by requiring that they have a Coinbase account to use the service. At the same time, Gyft
mandated that payments be made through Coinbase or BitPay. This was met with backlash and the
eGifter requirement was removed in March 2017.
According to the
blog post on the WeGift partnership, users can cash in their virtual coin for e-gift cards from companies like Nike, Tesco, Uber, Google Play, Ticketmaster, and Zalando.
This service is currently available to those in the UK, Spain, France, Italy, Netherlands and Australia.
According to TechCrunch, a bulk of the e-gift card retailers are
restricted to customers in the UK.
