How Canadians can use Bitcoin on Amazon (Purse.io)
Wishing you had an easy way to use Bitcoin?
Purse.io opens up the big one — Amazon.
Not only can Canadians use Purse with Amazon.com, but also on their native Amazon.ca.
This guide gives a summary of Purse’s own walkthrough for international customers, along with some important additions.
Spending Bitcoin saves you money
Purse is a brokerage system.
As you can’t yet select ‘Bitcoin’ as a payment option, you instead send bitcoins to your Purse account. Earners (people who want to earn your bitcoin) will ship you your Amazon orders in exchange.
So, how do you end up with a discount?
Purse lets you choose how much bitcoin to put up. If you’re willing to wait longer for your order to be shipped, you can commit up to 33% less than Amazon’s asking price.
The quick guide to placing an order with Purse
1. First, choose Amazon.com or Amazon.ca, and find your item(s).
2. Click on the bottom right to add the item(s) to a public wish list.
3. After viewing your complete wish list, click ‘Send list to others’ at the top right.
4. Go to Purse.io and click Import Wish List near the top of the page.
5. Choose which items you’d like to add to your Purse cart, then proceed to your cart.
6. The slider under ‘Set Your Discount’ will change the order’s estimated delivery time in based on the discount. Pretty fun!
7. At this point, if you haven’t created an account already, you will be asked to do so. You will also need to provide your address details for the order itself.
Assuming you’ve done that, it’s time to send your bitcoin payment.
Once you’ve paid, simply wait for the order to be fulfilled and delivered within the estimated timeframe.
That’s it!
If you are interested in becoming an earner, this article by Purse.io explains what happens on the other side of the trade.
Important tips for a better experience
A. Break down orders into different wish lists.
Some orders that you place on Amazon are not shipped by Amazon themselves, but by 3rd party distributors through a service called Amazon Marketplace.
Why does this matter?
Orders purchased off Amazon wish lists are treated as gifts. This means that Amazon will ship your order as a single boxed ‘gift’ bundle, rather than as separate orders arriving at different speeds. As a result, whenever you bundle orders together, the slowest distributor will hold up the package.
Make different wish lists and your shipments won’t be delayed.
B. Are you taking steps to protect your privacy?
Remember that Purse provides your submitted name and shipping details to the user who ends up purchasing your order for you.
In one case, a Purse customer alleged that their details were used to socially engineer access to their Amazon account.
A Purse representative responded in the same thread:
“Earners get the same information available on public Amazon wish lists. The items they’re purchasing, the name the user listed on the wish list (pseudonymous), and the city the order is shipping to.”
While these reports are few, we recommend a couple simple precautions to protect your identity.
- Use a pseudonym when creating your Purse orders
- Ship to an alternate address that you have secure access to, such as a business’s office or a campus department.
This article is part of the YAP Exchange’s Bitcoin Essentials series.
Feel free to contact us or visit us in store to learn more about managing your Bitcoin storage, security, and trading.
