Gift cards
Send shielded ZEC in a link, on a card you design. Whoever opens the link first claims it, with no app and no account.
A gift card is shielded ZEC held by a link. You design the card, pay it from your account's Ironwood pool, and send the link. Whoever opens the link first claims the ZEC in a browser, into a ZATS Market account or any Zcash wallet. Until it is claimed, you can take it back.
What a gift card is
- A wallet of its own. The app makes a new Zcash wallet for each card, in your browser, and pays the card's value into it from Ironwood.
- The link is the card. The card's secret sits in the part of the link after
#. Browsers never send that part to a server, so ZATS never sees it. - A small claim fee rides on top. You pay it with the card, so the person who claims a card to a shielded address receives its full value.
- A design and a message. Pick one of the designs, upload your own picture, or have one drawn by AI with an AI credit key. The message is on the back of the card.
Before you send a gift card
- An account in ZATS Market, unlocked in this browser. See your account.
- Enough shielded ZEC in Ironwood for the card, its claim fee and the network fee. To add ZEC, make a deposit.
Send a gift card
Design the card
Open Gifts and select Send a gift card. Choose a design, your own picture or an AI picture, then set the amount and write the message.
Pay for it
Check the card's value, its claim fee and the network fee. Type your password, then select Pay. The card is paid from Ironwood.
Share the link
Copy the link, show its QR code, or share it. Send it only to the person the card is for.
The card appears in Gifts with its state: sending, arriving, waiting to be claimed, then claimed or taken back. A card can be claimed once its payment is in a Zcash block, usually within a few minutes.
The link is the money
Anyone who has the link can claim the card, and the first one to claim it wins. Send it through a channel you trust, and ask the person to claim it soon.
Claim a gift card
The link opens a page of its own, with the card and the claim. It needs no app and no account.
- Open the link. The page reads the card from the chain.
- Turn the card over to read the message.
- Under Claim to, choose My ZATS account to claim into this browser's account, or Another
Zcash wallet and paste a unified address with an Orchard receiver or a
t1address. - Select Claim. The network fee comes out of the card.
If the page says there is nothing on the card yet, its payment is not in a block yet. The page checks again by itself.
Take a card back
While nobody has claimed a card, you can take it back into your Ironwood. Open the card in Gifts and select Take it back. If the person claims it first, nothing changes.
What stays private
- On the chain. A card paid from Ironwood and claimed to a shielded address is shielded at both steps: the amount, the sender and the receiver stay hidden, and nobody can link the sender to the person who claimed.
- At ZATS. ZATS never sees the card's secret. Your copy of it is sealed under your account. A picture of your own is encrypted in your browser, under a key made from the card's secret, before it is stored.
What does not stay private:
- The amount and the message are inside the link. Anyone who sees the link can read them.
- A claim to a
t1address makes the amount and that address public on the Zcash chain, but not who sent the card. - The server that passes the chain's blocks to the claim page sees that someone opened a claim page, and when. It cannot read the card or the claim.
Related pages
- Paying and following a purchase: how Ironwood pays.
- Balances and addresses: where a claimed card shows in your account.
- Privacy and safety: what ZATS holds for you.