Iranians without any international payment services (because of sanctions) or credit cards can use online premium services or even purchase an app online. How? We are going to answer that question in this post.

Imagine you live in Iran and you don’t have access to international payment services and you want to purchase an app from Google Play or App Store, what would you do? At first this might seems impossible but there are some ways that you can do it.

Gift Cards

Yes, gift cards, these cards are prepaid and would act as a credit. There are many businesses in Iran that

would just sell you gift cards online, you just have to search gift card in Farsi on Google.

What would you find? 339,000 results, of course not all of them are individual websites but you can’t count them all without spending so much time on it.

These websites even use Google Ads to attract their customers in Iran. It shows that at least they have an acceptable market if they are willing to pay for Google Ads.

There are tons of gift cards all over the internet from Google Play, iTunes, Spotify, Playstation Network (PSN), Amazon, Xbox Live Gold Membership, Steam and WebMoney to Visa and Master Cards.

Whenever people feel the need to use a service even when there is no gift card for it, they can always get a (Prepaid) Master Card or a Visa Card to buy the service that they want.

Maybe many people don’t use these kind of gift cards or credit cards but they can always count on it if they want to use a service outside of Iran.

It’s Not Only Gift Cards

There are even app stores for Apple Devices which sells you apps from App Store. These app stores enable Iranians to buy their desired apps indirectly from App Store in Rial with their Iranian debit cards. So they don’t even need to buy an Apple gift card. For Android as we mentioned in previous posts, Cafe Bazaar is signing contracts with many companies such as Supercell and Gameloft to enable Iranians to buy the apps or make an In-App Purchase. And people can always buy Google Play gift cards to put a credit on their google account.

Overall these methods are used by Iranians to bypass the US financial sanctions against Iran. Since many of these services are just for ordinary Iranians we hope that the US would lift these sanctions that are affecting Iranians in Iran.