[avvt4avaw]

Buddy, your business is selling "privacy cards" and "virtual cards" which hide the identity of the person making the transaction.

It's a massive money laundering red flag, it's not at all surprising that Stripe doesn't want to deal with you.

[hienyimba]

Privacy cards means the cards protect the user's real cards not their identity.

If you have ever been hacked or cannot cancel a renegade subscription, you would quickly grasp the need for Privacy cards.

[tw04]

That would be more believable if you didn't specifically call out allowing foreigners to pretend to be from the US to "unlock services": aka - violate the TOS of said service and likely breaking one or more US laws.

[ddtaylor]

Gym memberships are notorious for this, btw.

[ceejayoz]

Said gym memberships tend to be because you signed an annual contract, with specific requirements to cancel early.

Using one of these one-time-use cards won't get you out of the debt itself, and these sorts of gyms will happily wreck your credit by sending it to collections.

[Macha]

I've heard of some cases where the contract auto-renews and requires an in-person presence during a limited time window to cancel when they're quite busy.

While I'm sure these places have it in their terms, just making someone sign a contract to agree to it doesn't make it not-unethical or not worth criticising. It just makes it "not illegal in some jurisdictions"

[ceejayoz]

I certainly agree on the ethical front.

On the "use a privacy.com temporary card" front, the problem is functional, not ethical. They will sue you or send you to collections over the debt.

[mikro2nd]

FWIW I've been fucked over by Standard Bank in South Africa for just this. It's not just "shady" operators.

[cascom]

I “hide my identity” daily when I make transactions, it’s called cash, guess that’s a red flag.

[adventured]

That's an interesting point, because Stripe also doesn't handle cash.

Something can be perfectly fine for people to do, and it can be just as fine for Stripe to not want to handle it. They can choose what types of businesses they want to allow on their network. It potentially creates opportunities for other service providers.

[ncallaway]

Aren’t cash businesses well known as money laundering opportunities?

Cash transactions above a specific dollar value literally generate reports to the government for investigation.

So, I think, yes, cash transactions tend to generate suspicion among anti-money laundering efforts.

[cascom]

So any business that accepts cash generates suspicion? I think not.

The reporting you are referring to only relates to bank transactions. In the US, When a business deposits their cash receipts, the bank generates a report. There is no obligation on the business (e.g.a car dealership that sells a car for $100k in cash has no incremental reporting burden)

More importantly - because x can be used in the commission of y crime, but the vast majority of the use of x is in perfectly normal/legal use, one should not cast suspicion on the use of x or reverse the burden of proof on for using x.