Source: Unsplash
Payments online no longer evoke fear or uncertainty, as they are now a standard way of exchanging money for various goods and services. We shop online, book tickets, make reservations, and pay for all of it from our bank accounts, using our credit cards. Such activities are easy to track and controlled by banks. The majority of people don’t care about that fact, but there are some who would wish that their payments were rather anonymous and discreet. Lucky for them, there are quite a few possibilities to do so.
E-wallet
E-wallet is one of the easiest and widely available options, but it’s worth underlining that in most cases it’s only partially anonymous. What is it? As the name suggests, this option resembles a traditional wallet but in a digital version. It allows “keeping” money in one place, making payments, receiving them and adding credit cards. Among the most popular e-wallets are such options as PayPal, Google Pay and Apple Pay.
PayPal’s main goal was not to enable anonymous payments, but it turned out that it facilitates such transactions. It’s widely accepted and easy to use. If you set up an account in the right way and additionally use a VPN service that hides your IP address, you can make anonymous transactions. If you want to try it out, check how PayPal works and whether it’s really something for you.
Other apps, such as Google Pay and Apple Pay, are a bit more secure and anonymous. Both platforms use tokenization, a technology that creates a virtual number every time a user makes a transaction. However, there is a catch. It’s not that anonymous, or at least not anonymous enough for some users. As, especially in the case of the Apple app, it’s linked to your device, which unfortunately can be easily tracked down.
Masked or prepaid cards
An interesting option is a use of a masked or prepaid card. However, such a solution is not entirely anonymous, which for some people might be inconvenient. It’s still a way to make a discreet payment, so let’s take a closer look at those two possibilities.
A masked card might be offered by a bank, but not all institutions have them in their offer. This masking service allows using your own “official” credit card, but its number and your personal details are not revealed throughout the process of the transaction.
Its main disadvantage is that you still use the card that is assigned to a particular bank that knows about your transactions and has your personal data.
Prepaid cards work a bit like gift cards. You exchange cash for such a card, and you can use it online to buy goods and services for a sum equal to the worth of the card.
This way, any transaction is anonymous and, in most cases, only requires registering a card with a given website.
Cryptocurrency
One of the best methods of anonymous, discreet payment is the use of cryptocurrency. It’s a digital currency, and one of the well-known ones is Bitcoin. The anonymity of cryptocurrency is both its advantage and a source of criticism – depending on the point of view. The majority of people do not understand what cryptocurrency exactly is and how it works, but the fact remains that it’s still one of the safest ways of payment when it comes to discretion.
Why is it useful?
Why bother with anonymous payment in the first place, and does it have to be linked to criminal activity? No, there could be a variety of reasons why someone wishes to be secure and covert. It’s prevalent among businesses, as well as regular Internet users. If you wish to play in an online casino in a country where gambling is prohibited, such as the United Arab Emirates, you’ll need to employ discreet payment methods. All you have to do is find a secure platform where you can read online gambling guides from a secure site like Arabianbetting and choose a discrete payment option to wager and play simply.
Other Internet users simply care about their privacy and want to protect their valuable data wherever they can. That is when discreet payment methods might also prove to be useful and reliable. The choice of such methods is vast and suitable for all needs.
Also published on Medium.
