I have written about Shopping.io before on Publish0x which you can read that article here. But since that day I have purchased... well let's just say a few things with Crypto.

And I know what you are thinking, There are plenty of sites or ways to buy things with Crypto. And you are right however... with Shopping.io there are a few benefits at least the way I see it and there are a few negatives which we will get into in this article.

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What is Shopping.io ?

It is a website that let's you purchase various products from various websites and pay with crypto. They didn't a refresh/rebranding like 2 years ago and now they don't tell you what websites they utilize to search for products but from my experience I know at least they buy items from Amazon, eBay and Walmart at the least.

1. You navigate to www.shopping.io and then search for the product you want.
2. You find it and add it to your cart.
3. You then checkout and they tell you how much crypto to send and the address to send it to.
4. Then you wait for your product.

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Let's Buy Something!

So let's say I wanted to buy some Pokemon Cards from the set "Journey Together". I already purchased a ETB and Booster Box of Journey Together via shopping.io so I want to get some more now.

Step 1) Search For The Item

Head to their website and click on the "Start Shopping with AI" button and it will open a window for you to search with.

I am looking to pickup some single Pokemon Cards so that I can fill out my 151 Master Collection but trying to find a specific card is hard.. so for this example we are just going to search for "3D Printer".

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It will give you 8 options to start with. Every item will give you 3 options

• Add to Cart = that adds it to your Cart.. obviously
• View Details = This will bring up a new tab with more pictures and description of the item
• Similar Items = This will search for 8 more items that are similar to this specific item.

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Step 2) Pick The Item

I picked the 7th item and clicked on "View Details" to learn more about that item.

That brings up bigger pictures, and if you keep scrolling down you will see the description of the item:

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Since that is the item I want I click on "Add to Cart" and it brings me to my Cart.

Rinse and Repeat this step until you have ALL the items you want in your cart.

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Step 3) Checkout

When you click on "Proceed to Checkout" on the previous section it will bring up the Checkout portion.

You will need to fill out every field that has a red star by it.

Tech Tip: If you want to keep your identity a secret try the following steps to get 'fake' data.

Name: Just make something up
Street Address: This one you can't really lie if you want to receive the items haha but you could ship to a friends house or your parents house or a P.O. box?
Phone: Use Google Voice to generate a new phone number for free (bonus points if you use a new gmail account)
E-mail: Create a new Gmail account, or ProtonMail for extra security. If you create a new Google account use it for the Google Voice #.

Now you get a overview. You can place Order Notes into the order. Say you are buying a item that has 10 color options. You can specify which color you want or if you have special delivery instructions.

Coupons.. from what I can tell this is used for if you purchase something but it's out of stock you may get a refund via coupon code, so use that here.

Next we pay for it!

Click on the "Proceed to ShippingPay" and you will see a screen like this:

For this example I selected the Ethereum option and it takes you to the next screen:

Now just send that amount of ETH to that account and wait. You will get a e-mail notification when the transaction goes through.

This is what a e-mail will look like:

Once the item ships you will get a follow up e-mail that looks something like this:

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Positives of Shopping.io

• There is no KYC.
  • I mean I guess technically they will know your address that the products get shipped to but you can make up a name, e-mail, phone # and it's fine.
    
    
• Everything is free shipping.
  • You do pay a premium for that though (see the section below about the Negatives)
    
    
• The only fee you pay is to send the crypto to them for payment
  
  
• They accept a TON of various cryptocurrencies to fit with whatever you have laying around.
  
  
• They say they ship to most countries
  • I haven't tried this but it "should" work for you.

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Negatives of Shopping.io

• There is no brick and mortar store or phone support to contact if there are issues.
  • In my experience the support e-mail address has been great if and when I had issues (rarely ever).
    
    
• You pay a premium for the products versus using Fiat.
  • Shopping.io doesn't state which websites it uses but after some research and purchase I bought a item for $150 with crypto and it arrived via Walmart. Then looking on their website the same product was about $120 if I were to purchase it with fiat.
    
    
• They could just take your Crypto and run away with it and there is nothing you can do
  • But in all the orders I have done, this has NEVER happened to me
    
    
• The "Search for Products with AI" is lacking but it gets the job done if you work with it.
  
  
• There are certain items that you can NOT buy through them
  • Gift Cards, Digital Items, Sim Cards, Weapons, GPU's, Perfumes
    
    
• Sometimes you don't get tracking information sent out via e-mail.
  • You can reach out to them a day or two after the order is confirmed and see

To their credit their support is very good. They respond and resolve any issues I have had.

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More Info

I suggest reading their FAQ here: https://shopping.io/faq/

This is a RISK, I won't lie. You are sending someone crypto and hoping they send you what you ordered. I have never NOT received the items I ordered. Once I actually got double items and it was great!

I recommend if you are going to try this, to try it with a item under $10 to get a feel for the process. DYOR and all that but MY experience with them has been great.

Sometimes you try to buy a item and it's out of stock. Their support will reach out and ask if you want a refund, a coupon code for the same $$ value or to find a similar product instead.

Also fun fact.. all the hardware I bought to run my Hive Witness Node... yup paid for all of it with Crypto with Shopping.io!

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