Buy gift cards with Monero (XMR)

Why pay with Monero on Genghis?

On Monero, privacy is the default state, not an opt-in feature. Every transaction obscures sender, receiver, and amount through three cryptographic layers operating simultaneously: ring signatures, stealth addresses, and RingCT. There is no transparent ledger to leak from, no shielded pool to enter selectively, no mixing protocol to initiate. Privacy is what the chain does.

For digital-goods checkout, that property has a specific value: nothing about your purchase is recoverable from public chain data. A standard Bitcoin transaction creates a permanent on-chain record linking a wallet to a payment of a specific amount on a specific date, useful for analytics firms, less useful for privacy. A Monero transaction at Genghis leaves no equivalent trail. The only parties who know what you bought are you and Genghis.

Monero pairs well with the type of products people most often buy with privacy in mind: eSIMs for travel without identity-tied SIM registration, prepaid cards for purchases outside the cardholder's banking jurisdiction, gaming credit on regional storefronts, subscriptions for services that should not appear on a credit card statement. Genghis serves the catalogue; Monero handles the privacy at the rails.

How to buy gift cards with Monero: 3-step checkout

1. 1

   Pick your product

   Browse 4,500+ gift cards, game keys, eSIMs, and prepaid cards. Add to cart. No account creation required.

2. 2

   Select Monero at checkout

   Click "Pay with crypto" and choose XMR. The deposit screen shows a stealth address generated specifically for your order, plus the amount in XMR. The quote holds for about 20 minutes; the rate is not locked.

3. 3

   Send and receive

   Send the displayed amount from any Monero wallet (Monero GUI, Cake Wallet, Feather, Edge). Your code appears on screen as soon as the payment confirms on the network. We also email you a link to it. The email can be a burner address.

No KYC at checkout. No identity-linked metadata captured beyond the email address you choose to use for delivery, and that can be a one-time burner if you prefer.

How Monero's three-layer privacy actually works

Monero's privacy guarantees come from three distinct cryptographic primitives stacked on every transaction. Understanding what each layer does helps explain why XMR remains the strongest privacy chain at scale.

• ▸Ring signatures (sender privacy). When you sign a Monero transaction, your signature is mixed with 15 decoy signatures pulled from the chain's history. An outside observer cannot tell which signature is the real one: the sender is one of 16 possible candidates, all cryptographically indistinguishable. Current ring size is 16 (CLSAG protocol).
• ▸Stealth addresses (recipient privacy). Every transaction sends to a one-time public key derived from the recipient's public address. The recipient's actual address never appears on-chain. The deposit address Genghis displays at checkout is unique to your order and cannot be linked to other Monero transactions or to Genghis as a merchant by chain analysis.
• ▸RingCT (amount privacy). Ring Confidential Transactions hide the amount transferred using Pedersen commitments and range proofs. The chain verifies that no XMR was created or destroyed without revealing the amounts involved. Combined with the two layers above, the result is a transaction graph where sender, recipient, and value are all cryptographically obscured.

These properties are not configurable or optional: they apply to every transaction on the Monero main chain. There is no transparent fallback mode and no way to "opt out" of privacy on Monero. This is the core difference between XMR and chains like Zcash, where privacy is shielded but optional, or Dash, where privacy via PrivateSend mixing is opt-in.

Monero confirmations and block times

Monero's recommended confirmation count for full settlement assurance is 10 blocks (~20 minutes). Your code appears on screen as soon as the payment confirms on the network. We also email you a link to it.

Block times on Monero are deterministic at 2 minutes (target). Variance is low: 1 confirmation typically lands between 60 seconds and 4 minutes from broadcast. Compared to Bitcoin (10-minute target with high variance), Monero's confirmation rhythm is markedly more predictable.

Which Monero wallet should you use?

Wallet choice on Monero matters more than on most chains because the cryptography that powers privacy needs to be implemented correctly client-side. Stick to wallets maintained by the Monero community or with strong audit history:

• ▸Monero GUI / CLI. The official wallets from the Monero project. Full node mode (~200 GB) provides maximum privacy and self-sovereignty; light mode connects to remote nodes for faster setup. Recommended for primary balances.
• ▸Cake Wallet, Monero.com. Open-source mobile wallet with a polished interface. Good default for users who don't want to run a node. Privacy is preserved provided you trust the remote nodes (or run your own).
• ▸Feather Wallet. Desktop wallet focused on power users and OPSEC. Strong defaults, good Tor integration, recommended for users with elevated privacy requirements.
• ▸Edge Wallet. A multi-chain wallet with Monero support. Convenient if you hold multiple assets and don't want a separate app, though dedicated Monero wallets give better privacy guarantees.
• ▸Hardware: Ledger, Trezor. Monero is supported on both via the official Monero GUI/CLI integration. Recommended for larger balances; the hardware device handles signing while the software wallet handles privacy logic.

Avoid: custodial exchange "wallets" that hold XMR on your behalf. They reintroduce the centralised counterparty privacy gives you the option to avoid in the first place.

Monero fees, supply, and tail emission

At checkout, Genghis adds a network cost of $2.35 to Monero payments, shown before you pay. On the chain itself, Monero transaction fees are dynamic but consistently low, typically $0.0001 to $0.005 per transaction at current network demand. Fee level scales with the amount of data the transaction adds to the chain (mostly determined by the number of inputs, not the value transferred). Fee variance over time is small enough that the chain fee is effectively negligible for digital-goods checkout.

Monero has no fixed supply cap. After the main emission curve completed in 2022, the protocol entered tail emission: a fixed reward of 0.6 XMR per block (~157,680 XMR per year) paid forever to miners. This guarantees indefinite security funding without relying on transaction fees alone, addressing a long-standing concern about Bitcoin's post-subsidy era. Inflation rate is currently below 1% per year and decreases asymptotically toward zero.

Practical consequence for spenders: XMR has predictable, very low fees with no congestion-driven spikes (Monero's dynamic block size mechanism absorbs demand by expanding capacity rather than raising fees).

Related: pay with Zcash, Dash, or Bitcoin

If you're choosing among privacy-oriented or established networks, these are the closest paths:

• ▸Zcash (ZEC). zk-SNARK shielded transactions, selective privacy.
• ▸Dash (DASH). InstantSend speed, optional PrivateSend mixing.
• ▸Bitcoin (BTC). Original cryptocurrency, widest acceptance.

Further reading

• Bitcoin vs Stablecoins for Shopping: A Practical Comparison
• Living on Crypto in 2026: What Actually Works
• How to Spend Crypto in the USA Without Cashing Out