And save up to 33% on top of sale prices

Black Friday is now behind us and Cyber Monday is just hours away. For shoppers flocking to Amazon to take advantage of sales, there’s an easy way to pay with Bitcoin – and save even more money in the process.

The road to retail crypto adoption has been a slow one and while some retailers have hopped aboard the Bitcoin bandwagon, most have not.

One of the most elusive retailers is, without a doubt, Amazon.com. Although rumors have circulated for years that it is preparing to accept Bitcoin payments, the ecommerce giant has yet to do so.

For the longest time, if you wanted to use Bitcoin to buy items on Amazon, you had three options:

Convert Bitcoin to fiat currency and withdraw it to your bank account (which can take hours or even days). Use a crypto debit card (assuming you can get one in your country). Use your Bitcoin to buy Amazon gift cards and use those to pay for your purchases.

There is another method, however, that not only lets you pay for your Amazon purchases directly with Bitcoin, but can save you up to an additional 33% on top of sale prices.

Shop on Amazon with Bitcoin and save using Purse.io

Launched in April 2014, Purse.io is like having a network of personal Amazon shopping assistants who accept Bitcoin – except that these shopping assistants give you bonus discounts.

Once you’ve created an account on Purse.io, there are three ways that you can use the platform to shop on Amazon:

Browse Amazon’s inventory through Purse.io’s search function Use Purse.io’s Chrome extension to shop directly through Amazon Import your Amazon wishlist into Purse.io

Search

If you know exactly what you’re looking for – e.g. Instant Pot Duo 80 – then the search function works fine. There is no advanced search to filter results, however, which can make general searches cumbersome.

Chrome extension

Last year, Purse.io released the beta version of its Chrome extension that lets shoppers add products to their Purse shopping cart directly in Amazon.com, .ca, .jp, and .co.uk.

At the time of writing, the extension is still in beta and although it works, it can be a bit slow to add products to the shopping cart.

Import Wishlist

By far the easiest way to do your Amazon shopping to create a wishlist and import it into your Purse.io account.

Once you’ve imported your wishlist, you can add the items to your Purse.io shopping cart and check out.

Checking out and setting your own discount

This is where the magic happens. When you use Purse.io to pay for your purchases with Bitcoin, you are guaranteed a minimum discount of 5% on top of Amazon’s prices – including sale prices.

By adjusting the ‘Set Your Discount’ slider (see screenshot above) you can increase your discount to as much as 33%, though first-time orders are limited to a maximum discount of 15%.

Purse.io’s website explains how they are able to offer such steep discounts:

“On Purse, when you name your own discount, it is fulfilled by Earners – individuals who wish to exchange their Amazon gift cards for your cryptocurrency. As a shopper, you can reach for deeper discounts by trading delivery speed for savings.”

Purchases made using the Buy Now option are fulfilled by Purse.io directly and give you the minimum 5% discount.

There is a $25 minimum purchase requirement in order to avoid additional shipping fees with this option.

For purchases where you set your own discount, or for purchases that are being shipped outside of the United States, additional shipping costs may be incurred.

Paying for your Amazon order with Bitcoin

Now that you’ve added your Amazon items to the Purse.io shopping cart and gone through the checkout process, it’s time to pay for your order with Bitcoin.

On the Review Order page, you’ll see a big blue button that says ‘Proceed to Payment.’ When you click the button, you will be taken to a Complete Payment page that will display a Bitcoin address and QR code for you to send payment to (see screenshot above).

By default, Purse.io displays the pay-to Bitcoin address in Bech32 format (note the bc prefix). If your wallet does not support this format, click on the ‘Try different address format’ link underneath the QR code.

Once you have sent your payment and the first confirmation has been recorded on the network, the payment page will change to a confirmation page and you will also receive an email confirming your order:

Note: In addition to Bitcoin, you can also pay for your Amazon order with Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Zcash.