Private payment methods?

rorowes

I want to learn about private ways of paying for stuff. I know that cash and monero are probably the best way to do it. But I still want to learn more on this topic. Can anyone point me to some good resources to learn about private ways of paying for stuff?

boarim

rorowes Concerning Monero, there is the
Mastering Monero ebook that I read to learn more about it. I find it beginner friendly while giving an extensive view of how Monero works.

After that, you can delve into the specifics by hanging on the Monero IRC channels or mailing lists. You can find them on the Monero project website.

I don’t know about other private ways to pay online. As you said, there is still cash, of course—though not convenient to pay online.

[deleted]

rorowes As always with these types of questions, it depends on whom are you looking to achieve a level of privacy from. In case you're looking for a little extra privacy from your online merchant, neither Visa or Mastercard appear to verify names name. If you couple this with disposable virtual cards (if offered by your bank), disposable e-mail addresses and some sort of parcel locker or PO box you can ship to you've got yourself a pretty good privacy from the merchant. That's what I do. The bank would only know where you've shopped and not specifically what you bought. If you substitute virtual card for the likes of Monero or even a prepaid debit card it's even better obviously but outside of a few cases, I personally don't like to bother. For anything in-person cash is king.

roddyd

You can buy prepaid debit cards with cash which can then be used online.

seragold

roddyd Unfortunate some Patriot Act fallout in US seems to have made it impossible to set up prepaid debit cards (not gift cards) in the US without KYC. If anyone knows different I would be delighted to know about it.

What works fine on line is the gift card trip through Bitrefill buying the gift cards there with crypto.

roddyd

Has anyone else ever used a credit card proxy like privacy.com?

StarArmadillo

roddyd Yes, it's great. I can buy products online and put in a fictitious name and billing address on the merchants website, and Privacy.com will verify it as correct, even though it isn't. If you subscribe to their paid plan for $10/month, they will also hide the name of the merchant from your bank. I also like it for signing up for free trials that require a card number. You can just put the number in, the merchant/service will verify it as a real card, and then you can pause the card so they can never charge it.
Privacy.com still has to know who you are though. You have to take a selfie holding your ID unfortunately. I did this using the low quality webcam on a gaming laptop. When I did it, I uploaded the image to their website, and it appears that someone at Privacy.com verified me. Recently, I have heard that they are now using a third party called Onfido to verify customers, and that sometimes they ask for an SSN.

Graphite

StarArmadillo

I didn't have to go through all that. Just linked a checking account or debit card from my real bank.