I’m looking for a service/platform that converts crypto (preferably Monero) into Amazon gift cards (for buying books) and into virtual Visa/Mastercard-type cards (for purchasing online/virtual e-learning courses that use Stripe).
The service/platform must have these features/requirements:
Be clear about KYC/identity requirements (no-KYC).
Not be associated with fraud or illegal activity, so my course access isn’t at risk after purchase.
Provide a clear refund/dispute process if I lose access to purchased courses due to issues with the Visa/Mastercard.
Provide any required information (for example, a Billing Address) that Stripe requires during purchase.
Confirm that Amazon purchases will work with a new Amazon account plus a new gift card, without needing an already linked credit card and/or a prior address tied to the newly created account.
I’d also appreciate privacy-respecting purchasing-process tips, for example, what to pay attention to with these kinds of services/platforms, and any guides/discussions/sites that explain the tradeoffs (what gets sent to payment processors, how to reduce unnecessary personal data, etc).
If you have any tried-and-tested lessons and approaches, I’d love to hear them.
Do you want these payments un-linkable to you. Or are you just looking for privacy from your bank?
Bitrefill - Card can be added to phone wallet unlike most cards. Allows VPN/proxy during activation, No Monero unfortunately, No billing address.
Coinsbee - Billing address, no VPN during activation, Monero
This has more to do with Amazons security system. As long as you don’t exhibit fraudulent behavior like loading 3 $500 gift cards then immediately trying to buy a gaming PC, you’ll be fine.
Is the process: get the Mastercard Rewards Gift Card from Coinsbee (which provides a billing address), redeem it, and make my purchase (through Stripe) for (online/virtual) courses on an e-learning platform? It seems too good to be true.
Also, should I not use a VPN during all three phases, or only when getting the card from Coinsbee?
Yes. You can use any name/billing address that you want to. Stripe is known for accepting all types of cards. Even those useless visa gift cards sold in stores that don’t work anywhere get accepted with Stripe. The only problem would be if you want this completely un-linkable to you, you’d need to find a way to conceal your IP during the activation process.
I still think a online visa card provides plausible deniability even if your IP is exposed during activation because a IP address does not identify a person it needs correlation. Not like you’re on camera in the store buying it.
You could probably bypass their VPN/Proxy detection if you found a good proxy provider. But if that’s not a serious issue, just use a VPN during crypto transaction and purchase time. Make sure you are using a non-custodial wallet for Monero. Cake Wallet is good option.
What I usually do is KYC Exchange LTC > Cake Wallet LTC > Swap to XMR > Send to another XMR wallet. Buy the amount bigger than what you actually need. Never get exactly what you need to buy something. Yes that’s probably wasting extra money but I never want the KYC exchange to know I’m purchasing Monero and I don’t wan’t anyone matching my crypto purchase amounts to the amount from the site I’m buying from.
With Monero you should be using cake node, seth for privacy node, or hosting your own monero node on a privacy respecting VPS host. If you’re wondering why, relying on a random public remote node compromises privacy by allowing the node operator to link your IP address to your transactions and potentially providing a smaller pool of decoys.