How to Pay for Throne with Crypto: Gifting Creators in 2026

Throne does not accept cryptocurrency. There is no wallet connect button, no USDC option, and no on-chain checkout. Throne's gifter walkthrough has you add items to a cart and enter card details at checkout. Apple Pay and Google Pay show up on browsers that support them, and both are card rails underneath.

The workaround is straightforward: fund a Visa or Mastercard with crypto, then pay at Throne's checkout like any other supporter. Throne's processor sees a normal card transaction. SolCard has recorded a 100% acceptance rate on Throne.

Below: the three methods that work in 2026, what each costs on top of Throne's own fees, and how to keep a gift from failing at checkout.

Throne splits its charges in two, and the split matters when you are budgeting a card top-up. Payment processing fees are charged per transaction and land in your checkout total. Service fees are Throne's own cut: its documentation ties the payout-item fee to identity verification, bank account connections, and payout processing, and describes the unpaid fee on a cancelled crowdfund as deducted from the funds raised before the remainder transfers to the creator's balance. Here is the current structure from Throne's fee documentation:

So the arithmetic on your card is narrower than the full fee list suggests. A $50 physical gift reaches checkout at $51.75 before shipping and sales tax. A $50 cash gift, which processes at the higher payout rate, reaches $52.25. Shipping, sales tax, and the 1% non-USD surcharge are what move the number after that, and Throne shows all of them before you confirm. On a crowdfund, a creator's $100 goal is displayed as $109.75, because the one-time service fee is added to the goal itself rather than to each contribution.

Those percentages matter when you pick a payment method, because whatever your card charges to convert crypto to dollars stacks on top of Throne's fees, not underneath them.

Throne is not hostile to crypto users. It was simply never built for them, and a few mechanics make the gap wider than it looks.

No on-chain option at all. Throne routes everything through a standard card processor. No crypto checkout, no BitPay integration, no invoice you can settle from a wallet. Gift cards on a wishlist are items you buy through Throne's own gift shop with a card, not a way to pay with one.

Gift purchases look like high-risk transactions. A one-off charge to a gifting marketplace, shipping to an address the buyer has never used, is the exact pattern fraud models are tuned to flag. Cards with thin history get scrutinized harder.

Currency mismatch adds a layer. Throne charges an extra 1% on anything other than USD. If your card applies its own FX spread, you pay both.

The partner-store footprint is narrow. Partner stores cover the US, UK, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, France, Australia, and Mexico. Outside that footprint, gifts fall into the 7% or 9.75% service-fee tiers, and payout items route through the higher 3.9% + $0.30 processing rate that does hit your card. Supporters in those regions also tend to hold crypto precisely because local card access is limited.

Discretion cuts both ways. Throne's core promise is that a creator's shipping address stays private from the buyer. Supporters frequently want the same courtesy in the other direction: your bank statement does not need to be a record of who you support. A crypto-funded card keeps the purchase off that statement -- discretion, not concealment, since it is still a fully traceable card charge on regulated rails.

This is the method that works reliably for Throne. A crypto debit card converts your balance to fiat when the merchant charges it, so Throne's checkout receives an ordinary card authorization.

1. Sign up for a crypto card provider and get a card number issued
2. Top up with stablecoins or SOL from your wallet
3. Open the creator's Throne wishlist and choose a gift
4. Enter the card details at Throne's checkout, or pay with Apple Pay or Google Pay if your card supports it
5. Throne charges the card, sources the item, and ships it to the creator

SolCard accepts SOL, USDC, USDT, and SOLC across nine networks: Solana, Ethereum, Polygon, BSC, HyperEVM, Arbitrum, Optimism, Avalanche, and Base. Cards run on Visa and Mastercard rails and work in 200-plus countries. They are not available in Hong Kong.

Throne gifts are usually time-sensitive: a birthday stream, a milestone, a crowdfund closing in two days. Anything that takes business days to settle defeats the purpose. A funded card pays instantly, covers every gift type Throne offers -- physical items, gift cards, cash gifts, surprise gifts, and crowdfund contributions -- and requires nothing from the creator.

The Platinum tier also loads into Apple Pay and Google Pay, which Throne accepts at checkout -- and paying through Apple Pay skips the manual card entry behind most declines.

Top-up fees are where the real difference sits. Here is how the main options compare for a one-off gifting purchase:

Total cost of a $55 Throne checkout, by card:

• SolCard Platinum: $55.00 (0% top-up fee)
• Bybit Card: $55.50 (0.9% conversion)
• Cwallet Cozy: $55.99 (1.8% top-up)
• RedotPay: not quoted -- see RedotPay's fee page for current figures
• Moon: $56.00 (1% fee with a $1.00 minimum; the floor exceeds 1% of $55)
• SolCard Virtual: $57.75 (5% top-up fee)

SolCard's own two tiers sit at opposite ends of that list. The Virtual tier carries a 5% top-up fee plus a $10 issuance charge and a $5,000 monthly limit, which puts it at the expensive end on a per-gift basis. The Platinum tier removes the top-up fee and the monthly limit, but it is a physical card and requires identity verification. If you gift regularly, Platinum pays for itself fast. On one $20 gift, the difference is a dollar.

Services like Pay with Moon issue a virtual Visa funded by Bitcoin, Lightning, or stablecoins. You buy a card loaded to a set amount and spend it once.

1. Open the prepaid card service and choose a load amount
2. Pay from your wallet in a supported asset
3. Receive a virtual Visa number
4. Enter it at Throne's checkout

Pros:

• No account relationship to maintain, no setup beyond the single purchase
• Supports Bitcoin and Lightning, which crypto-funded debit cards generally do not take as top-up assets

Cons:

• Premiums of roughly 3-5% over face value
• Many cards are single-use, so a second gift means a second card
• If Throne's total exceeds your loaded balance, the charge fails outright
• Refunds to a spent single-use card are awkward to recover

The load amount is the real problem. Throne shows the full total only at checkout, so a card loaded to exactly $50 will not cover it once processing, shipping, and sales tax land on top. Workable once, bad for anyone who supports creators regularly.

The traditional route: sell crypto on an exchange, withdraw fiat over 1-3 business days, and pay Throne with your normal bank debit card.

It works, because it is an ordinary domestic bank card. Everything else is a downside: slow enough to miss a crowdfund deadline, 0.1-1.5% in exchange fees plus a withdrawal charge, a bank account required in a supported country, and the purchase lands on your primary statement. For how these routes compare across merchants generally, see our guide to paying with crypto.

Choose your tier, then top up with USDC or USDT for a predictable dollar value. If you fund with SOL, conversion happens at the market rate at deposit time.

Load more than the sticker price. Throne's checkout adds 2.9% + $0.30 processing on physical items, then shipping, sales tax, and 1% on non-USD payments. A $40 item can settle well above $44 once shipping and tax land, so a 20% buffer is not paranoia, it is the arithmetic.

Pick the gift, or choose a cash gift, a surprise gift if the creator has that section enabled, or a contribution to an open crowdfund. Payout-type gifts process at the higher 3.9% + $0.30 rate, so budget for that on your card; their 9.75% service fee comes out of the creator's side rather than your checkout.

Enter the card number, expiry, and CVV, or select Apple Pay or Google Pay if your card is in a wallet. Use a billing address matching your card's issuing country. Throne displays the full total including fees, taxes, and shipping before you confirm -- read it and check your balance covers it.

Check your card's transaction history to confirm it cleared. Throne handles sourcing and shipping from there; the creator's address never passes through you.

Start with the balance. Throne's checkout total includes fees you did not budget for, and card-network authorizations can request slightly more than the final capture. Keep a 15-20% cushion above the item price.

Billing address mismatch. If your card sits on a US BIN, use a US billing address. Country mismatches between the BIN and the entered address are a routine decline trigger on card-not-present transactions.

Do not retry immediately. A decline followed by three rapid retries reads as card testing to a fraud engine and can get the card blocked for the merchant. Fix the actual cause -- almost always balance or address -- then try once more.

Watch the FX layer. On a non-USD gift, Throne adds 1% and your card adds its own spread: 0-1.5% on Platinum, 1-2% on Virtual. Paying in USD removes one of the two.

Use the wallet path when available. Apple Pay and Google Pay carry stronger authentication signals than keyed-in card numbers, which improves approval odds.

Occasional gifter, one or two gifts a year. Any funded card works. Fee differences on a $30 gift amount to pocket change. Pick whichever provider you can set up fastest.

Regular supporter with a monthly habit. Take the lowest top-up fee you can access. On a Platinum-tier card at 0%, you pay Throne's fees and nothing else -- across a year of monthly gifts, that is the difference between paying the platform and paying the platform plus a card provider.

Crowdfund contributor. Load the card before the crowdfund closes, not during. An off-ramp that takes three business days will miss the deadline. Note that the 9.75% payout fee is added once to the displayed goal, not charged on each contribution, so what you owe is your pledge plus the processing fee on your own transaction.

Supporter who values discretion. A crypto-funded card keeps your gifting off your primary bank statement. Your business is your business -- and it is still a regulated, fully traceable card payment, with identity verification on the Platinum tier. The same logic applies to other creator platforms, covered in our guide to paying OnlyFans with crypto.

In most jurisdictions, spending crypto is a disposal of a digital asset, which makes it a taxable event even when the money goes to a gift rather than to yourself. The US IRS digital asset guidance treats it this way.

Paying with USDC or USDT keeps this simple: a stablecoin at a 1:1 peg produces a gain of effectively zero at disposal, so there is nothing meaningful to report. Paying with SOL is different -- if the token moved between acquisition and spend, that difference is a realized gain or loss in most tax regimes, and you need a cost basis for it.

Gift tax is a separate question from capital gains and depends on amount and jurisdiction; typical Throne gifts sit far below the thresholds where it becomes relevant. Our guide to spending crypto without tax headaches covers record-keeping in depth, and none of this is tax advice -- talk to a professional about your own situation. For a side-by-side of the providers named above, see our best crypto debit cards comparison.

No. Throne runs a standard card checkout, with Apple Pay and Google Pay available on browsers that support them. There is no cryptocurrency checkout option and no wallet connect. To pay with crypto you need a card funded by crypto, which Throne's processor treats as a standard card transaction.

Not directly at Throne's checkout. You can load USDC or USDT onto a crypto-funded Visa or Mastercard and pay with that card. SolCard accepts USDC and USDT across nine networks including Solana, Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, and Polygon. Stablecoins are the better choice because the dollar value you load is the dollar value you spend.

Your card is charged payment processing of 2.9% + $0.30 on physical items or 3.9% + $0.30 on payout items, plus 1% if you check out in a currency other than USD, plus shipping and sales tax. Throne's service fees are separate: 0% on partner store items, 7% on gifts Throne sources and ships, and 9.75% on cash gifts, direct credit, and crowdfunded payouts. On payout items Throne's documentation describes that fee as deducted from the funds before they reach the creator, and on a crowdfund it is added once to the displayed goal rather than to each contribution.

Usually insufficient balance, because Throne's checkout total adds service fees, processing, shipping, and tax to the item's listed price. The other frequent causes are a billing address that does not match your card's issuing country, and rapid retries after a first failure. Load a 15-20% buffer, match the address, and retry once rather than four times.

Yes, on both sides of the transaction. Throne's gifter walkthrough describes a gifter-name field at checkout, along with the option to order without revealing who you are to the creator, and Throne keeps the creator's shipping address hidden from you in every case. A crypto-funded card additionally keeps the purchase off your primary bank statement. This is discretion, not concealment: card transactions run on regulated Visa and Mastercard rails and remain fully traceable, and identity verification is required for the Platinum tier.

Yes, on browsers that support it. Throne's checkout offers Apple Pay and Google Pay alongside manual card entry, and SolCard's Platinum tier loads into both wallets. That is generally the smoothest path through Throne's checkout, since it avoids manual card entry and the address mismatches behind most declines. Our guide to using Apple Pay with a crypto card walks through the setup.