Private payments and payment masking services in Europe?

The services listed on Financial Services - Privacy Guides are unfortunately not available for Europe (EU).

Do you know the equivalent services for Europe?

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Payment masking, at least for EU, is not a thing. There are some services that let you generate a lot of cards for convenience reasons, but they will always be tied to your name, there will always be KYC.

As for gift cards, that’s not really specific to Europe, but I know this service and can at least vouch for them insofar that they always delivered to me so far: Digital Goods – ProxyStore

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This is been asked several times on the forum. It’s not possible due to legislation in the EU against money laundering and funding of terrorism.

See also: Card masking tool - #4 by ph00lt0 and Getsby (EU Payment Masking Service) - #8 by ph00lt0

I saw one being recommended by Techlore, and I wanted to ask what people thought about it here. But now I cannot find it.

It is possible, though youre limited to 150€ or thereabouts. Ive seen Bitsa pre paid cards being sold in supermarkets, for example. Its a Visa pre paid card

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Are you sure you do not have to activate them with KYC? From what I have seen you still need to go download apps and do a livenessid check with vague third parties for credit cards like this.

Dont know about the Bitsa one specifically but some banks do have such prepaid cards with no KYC, up to 150€. For example, Banco Montepio has a non-KYC and KYC version of their prepaid card. The former is limited to 150€ and cant be topped up. I have myself used this card, the version of it that doesnt require KYC. You do however need to get it from one of their branches, it isnt available anywhere else. They do not ask for any ID.

edit: this one, from Unibanco, has a 2500€ limit and doesnt require KYC if purchased in-branch (if ordered online it requires activation, not sure if theyll ask for personal info to activate it). The whole idea is that it works as a gift card. Of course nothing stops you from using it yourself.

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Thanks for sharing!

I was taking a look on their terms & conditions about this card and they have this:

When applying for the Card, all the identification requirements will be complied with to which BANCO MONTEPIO is subject

(original: «aquando da solicitação do Cartão, serão observados todos os deveres de identificação a que o BANCO MONTEPIO se encontra sujeito.»)

They are not being very specific about which “identification requirements” they are refering to. Do you have an idea?

No, I got one pre-Covid, just walked into a branch, at first they were not sure what I was even talking about, then just gave me the card once they figured it out, I paid in cash. They had the customized (personalizado) and not customized variants, the former being the KYC one. Looking at the website now, it appears that it continues to work in the same manner. I might be wrong though

edit: note that those conditions seem to be for the customized variant. Them still making that distinction suggests that the non customized variant is still available, back then they also made little mention of it since you could not order it online. Do give us an update if you find out more about it

I will have a look soon.
Thank you :smiley:

Another option that might be worth exploring:

“Não necessita de documentação para usar o seu Cartão Spark até ao nível Spark Premium” (No documentation needed except for the Premium tier)

Apparently its also available at petrol stations and seemingly the only thing they require is a phone number for activation (one can easily get an anonymous pre paid SIM card): https://cartaospark.pt/ativar/

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This one seems pretty cool. But not so legitimate as Montepio’s one. Seems too good to be true :smiley:
Currently I’m using cash or a “Dá” (Continente) card. It fits my needs. Would be cool to have also montepio’s available

Viabuy and Coinsbee exists but I hardly know what are the features and if they can be trusted.

Techlore recommends Viabuy. I’d love to know more about it.

I guess we need a holiday to Portugal haha @Reset0609. Here I have only seen ones you need to activate with KYC in recent years.

But that leaves me with the question, what is the acceptance rate? Prepaid credit cards here were often only offered by Discover, which basically was only accepted on games f.x. not really any store takes that around here.

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In Portugal they should be accepted anywhere that accepts card payments since like virtually all cards issued in Portugal theyre dual scheme Multibanco/Visa or Multibanco/Mastercard cards and I cant recall a single place that doesnt accept Multibanco. What you have is the opposite, in that a few places only accept Multibanco and no foreign/international card schemes (tourists have a lot of trouble with this and usually no one actually is aware of the dual scheme thing in order to be able to explain them why “foreign cards dont work.”)

The issue might then be with foreign, as in not Portuguese, merchants that might not accept “prepaid” Visa or Mastercard

Oh this sounds like Denmark. They have this issue with their own ‘dankort’ too. It’s time one of these co-systems becomes an EU alternative to the VISA/mastercard monopoly.

SIBS, the entity behind Multibanco, actually has a lot of patents related to payment systems. They have the patents for ATMs that dispense coins, for example, and they had the patent for virtual cards, which expired a few years ago. Thats why virtual Visa/MC cards are a standard banking feature here in Portugal since 2002 while everyone else just discovered them a few years ago. They license and design lot of stuff thats used in other countries.

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That’s good info. Never knew.