Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mbmott 3702 days ago
As far as I know you can't make a purchase without having valid payment data. There might be a work around, but probably not via Bitcoin payments. Bitpay is definitely subject to KYC / AML compliance.
1 comments

> As far as I know you can't make a purchase without having valid payment data.

What is "valid payment data"? How do they validate this data?

>Bitpay is definitely subject to KYC / AML compliance.

Why is that relevant?

What is "valid payment data"? How do they validate this data?

You need to have a valid payment method. I'm not sure how better to explain this... a credit card or paypal account etc. It's validated when the payment clears. Both of these have strong identity data linked to them.

KYC (Know your customer) / AML (Anti Money Laundering) compliance means validating the identities of those you do business with. That means, using Steam to launder money isn't possible. This should be pretty obvious.

>You need to have a valid payment method. I'm not sure how better to explain this... a credit card or paypal account etc. It's validated when the payment clears. Both of these have strong identity data linked to them.

No, paypal doesn't do ANY identity verification for customers beyond fraud scoring and AVS.

For cards, you can just get a prepaid. And most cards outside of the US don't even support AVS, so there's no way for valve to validate any of the information you give them besides the PAN and CVV.

>KYC (Know your customer) / AML (Anti Money Laundering) compliance means validating the identities of those you do business with. That means, using Steam to launder money isn't possible. This should be pretty obvious.

I don't think Valve is covered (or considers themselves to be covered) by either of those, and they certainly don't appear to be doing any of the typical KYC stuff.

Steam uses Bitpay. "KYC" means "know your customer". "Customer" is the guy/gal trying to use Steam to launder bitcoin. Relevance elucidated?
No, Valve software is bitpays "customer". The guy/gal trying to use Steam to launder bitcoin is a customer of Valve Software.