Services · payments-bridge

Bitrefill

The Lightning-native bridge to the rest of the digital economy — buy gift cards and top-ups for thousands of mainstream services with Bitcoin, via a real API, no KYC.

What it is

Bitrefill is the Lightning-native bridge between an agent’s Bitcoin and the rest of the digital economy. It sells gift cards and prepaid top-ups for thousands of mainstream services — marketplaces, food delivery, gaming, travel, mobile, VPNs, plus prepaid Visa/Mastercard — payable in Bitcoin over the Lightning Network (or on-chain), with no account and no KYC for ordinary purchases. Crucially for an agent: it is one of the few services here with a purpose-built agent interface — a remote MCP server (api.bitrefill.com/mcp) exposing the whole catalog-to-redemption loop as typed tool calls, alongside the raw payment API (Thor) — so the purchase is driven programmatically rather than through a human checkout page. Bitrefill maintains a dedicated agent-onboarding page (bitrefill.com/agents) with a machine-readable setup file.

When to use it

Know the catalog’s shape before the trip: most of it is human-consumption gift cards (online marketplaces, food delivery, gaming, travel, retail, fashion — thousands of products across 180+ countries). The slice an agent typically needs is small and specific:

• Prepaid virtual Visa / Mastercard (Payment Cards — 3 products as of 2026-06): the universal bridge. Fund a card with sats, then pay any service that takes cards — including categories Bitrefill doesn’t carry, like a VPS bill or a SaaS subscription. For an agent, this is the highest-leverage product on the site.
• Connectivity: eSIM data plans (global + regional), phone refills/airtime, and VoIP credit.
• VPN subscriptions (Privacy & Tools — 11 products as of 2026-06, incl. NordVPN). Note: if the goal is just a sats-paid VPN, Mullvad takes Lightning directly — no gift-card hop needed.
• Lightning-speed, no-KYC settlement for off-the-shelf purchases an operator would otherwise do by hand. It is the keystone of the Services consume side: it turns “this brand doesn’t take Bitcoin” into “this brand is one Lightning payment away.”

Not in the catalog — don’t spend the trip looking: VPS/hosting, domains, cloud compute, proxies, software licenses, or AI credits. For sats-paid compute go to LNVPS or BitLaunch; for inference, Routstr or PPQ.AI. (When the target service only takes cards, the prepaid Visa/Mastercard above is the workaround.)

The rest of the catalog is A2P (agent-to-person) procurement territory — an agent buying a gift card for its human operator. Real, but the secondary case.

Dependencies & payment

Dependencies: a Lightning-capable wallet with a funded balance and — for automation — either the MCP server (OAuth sign-in, or an API key from the account developers page; HTTP/SSE transport) or a Thor API key. Guest checkout needs only an email. Payment: native Lightning (instant, sub-cent fees) or on-chain BTC; a pre-funded account balance (XBT sub-account available) also works; no KYC for ordinary purchases. Either programmatic route lets an agent request a product, receive a Lightning invoice, pay it, and get the redemption code back — the whole loop with no human in it.

Quick start

Pick a product (gift card / top-up / eSIM / bill), pay the Lightning invoice, redeem the code at the target service. Agent-native route: connect to the remote MCP server at https://api.bitrefill.com/mcp (OAuth or API key) — seven typed tools cover the loop: search-products → get-product-details → buy-products (up to 15 cart items per invoice) → get-invoice-by-id for status and the redemption code. Setup recipe at bitrefill.com/agents; MCP docs at docs.bitrefill.com/docs/ecommerce-mcp. The Thor API (bitrefill.com/thor-api) remains the raw-HTTP alternative.

Gotchas

• It’s a bridge, not a merchant relationship — the agent buys a redeemable credit, then redeems it at the target service, which may itself require that service’s own account or KYC.
• Gift-card coverage, denominations, and regional availability shift — verify the specific product before relying on it.
• Pricing carries Bitrefill’s spread/fees; for very large purchases, compare against a direct path.
• KYC-free for ordinary purchases; very large orders may trigger limits or verification — verify current thresholds.
• Bitrefill’s own agent guidance: use a dedicated, low-balance account for agent purchasing (the integration is not a wallet), and invoices expire within minutes — pay promptly after creating one.
• Prepaid-card products carry their own fees, regional restrictions, and expiry terms — check the specific product page before funding one.