Technology keep advancing, same as many business owners take their businesses to the digital level. Precaution is to be taken when buying stuffs both online and offline. However, anonymous payment methods consider your privacy first, at the same time, offering you the convenience you need when sending payments.
The internet has made things very easy for all of us. Its not only a source of information, but also a place where we get most items we need rather than going to a physical store.
Though the internet has all you need to send payments, there are risks when sending payments through the internet.
Data breaches, identity theft and financial fraud are just some of the risks involved with sending payments online. With such risks at stake, knowing the best anonymous payment methods is more than important.
No one will want to be in financial instability; which is why as long as finances are concerned, it is important to deal with the reputable private and anonymous payment methods that keep your information private when sending payments.
You may want to send a payment to someone you don't know. The receiver, in this case, can be a hacker, scammer or someone related to several fraudulent activities. If you use a less secure payment method, usually the one they recommend, you would be a victim of their fraudulent activities.
If in case you're a victim or hack or scam, you should be aware that, in most cases, neither companies nor governments will help you get back your funds.
To avoid the risk of being targets of these con-artist, you should consider using private and anonymous payment methods most especially when sending payments to someone you don't know.
To help you secure your personal details, we've compiled the best private and anonymous payment methods for sending money anonymously.
Table of Contents
Different Types of Anonymities Associated Payment Methods
There are two different types of anonymity associated with payment methods.
- Partial (semi) anonymity — The majority of partial anonymous payment methods and services keep your identity a secret from the person making the payment to you or receiving it from you.
- Full anonymity — With this level of anonymity, no one can identify you. The traditional method of obtaining complete anonymity is a cash transaction, but you'll discover a couple more today.
As you will see later in this article, obtaining partial anonymity is rather simple, but full anonymity is more difficult.
This is mainly due to the fact that moving money from (and to) the world of fiat money is required in order to make (and receive) payments.
Fiat is the type of "money" that we keep in banks and carry around in our wallets.
The fiat financial system makes it nearly impossible to move money around without requiring the required disclosure of numerous different types of personal data.
Partial (semi) anonymity is significantly simpler to achieve than full anonymity.
Cash is still the preferred method of payment. But for many different kinds of transactions, especially online purchases, cash is really impractical.
Fortunately, even for online purchases, there are still a few methods that work. Soon you'll see what I mean.
Anonymous Payment Methods
As mentioned earlier, there are two levels of anonymity associated with different payment methods.
First things first, we'll talk about the semi-anonymous payment methods before we move to the full anonymous payment methods.
Semi-Anonymous Payment Methods
Here are the payment methods that offer partial anonymity.
1. Prepaid Cards — Semi-Anonymous Payment Method
Prepaid cards are cards that you purchase with a specific amount of money loaded onto them.
Prepaid cards are ideal for shopping online since they offer convenience and security when paying for your purchases.
They are sometimes referred to as prepaid credit cards, prepaid debit cards, and prepaid gift cards.
They function similarly to a credit card or debit card, with a few significant exceptions.
- Prepaid cards aren't the same as credit cards. Every time you use a credit card, you are borrowing money with the intention of paying it back later. A prepaid card prevents you from borrowing money. The funds that have already been loaded onto the card's account are all that are being used.
- Prepaid cards are not debit cards. Your bank account is connected to your debit card, which regularly withdraws funds as needed. Prepaid cards are not linked to bank accounts. They simply withdraw money until the pre-paid amount is used from their own account.
Prepaid cards are available for purchase in numerous locations, both online and in physical stores.
A prepaid card's degree of anonymity depends on how you purchase them and what you do with them once you've spent all the money on them.
The FTC cautions about some prepaid card payment schemes, so be cautious.
Prepaid cards provide a wide range of options if you just want to keep your identity hidden from the person you are doing business with.
Prepaid cards can be purchased online or in person at a retailer using a credit card.
It truly makes no difference because the individual you are doing business with will still remain anonymous.
After using all the funds on the small plastic card, you might be unsure about what to do with it.
Some prepaid cards allow for the anonymous reloading of cash or maybe cryptocurrencies. Again, if you don't have to provide identification to reload your card.
If you can reload a card online, the card issuer will know some details about you in the process.
From the viewpoint of the person you are transacting with, you will still be anonymous.
Also Read: How To Send Money From Bank Account Without Verification
2. Virtual Cards — Semi-Anonymous Payment Method
Virtual cards often referred to as virtual credit cards are more like prepaid cards that can only be accessed through phone.
These cards defend their stand as anonymous payment methods since they don't disclose information of the owner when sending payments through them.
Some virtual cards are ideal for international shopping as they offer convenience when paying for your items online.
Some reputable disposable virtual card services such as Privacy.com offer virtual credit cards that you can use once. Such cards are ideal for those looking to send payment anonymously since they won't work anymore once they've been used.
Virtual cards are not however, considered as an anonymous payment method by many because;
- The virtual card service knows your identity (and is linked to your bank account or credit card).
- Every transaction can be seen by the virtual card service.
However, they come with lots of advantages when sending money online including;
- You can hide your identity from the merchant where you are purchasing goods or services.
- You can create burner cards that expire after a single transaction.
- You can set spending limits on cards, which prevents unauthorized payments.
- You can delete cards at any time, so they can no longer be used.
- Cards are locked to the first merchant they are used with, preventing unauthorized use by third parties.
Privacy.com is only available for U.S. residents. However, UK residents can use Curve to get virtual credit cards.
3. PayPal — Semi-Anonymous Payment Method
PayPal is one of the best international money transfer apps that let transfer money with total convenience. Besides that, PayPal is a partial anonymous payment method that offers some anonymity when sending payments.
You must provide PayPal with your name and email address in order to create an account. You must register a card or bank account with the service in order to transfer money into and out of PayPal. Only your name and email address are visible to those who send you payments or receive them.
There is a way to hide your real (home) address if you are accepting physical assets with your PayPal transaction. Just enter another address where you'd like the item mailed. This could be a post office box, a friend's house, a company address, or some other place.
You can open a business account if you run a company. By doing this, you can have your business name and email address appear in PayPal transactions in place of your real name.
To use PayPal in complete anonymity, you should consider using a disposable email address, a virtual phone number, and a fake address for creating your account.
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3. Cash App — Semi-Anonymous Payment Method
Cash App is a well-known untraceable money transfer app and a P2P payment service that lets users send and receive payment semi-anonymously. The Cash App is only available for US and UK residents.
Cash App lets you send money without even knowing the identity of the other person; all you'll need is the person's $Cashtag for sending payments.
You can make payments to someone using their Name, $Cashtag, Email, or SMS (text messages sent through phone). The same options can also be used to request payment.
Cash App will know your identity even though you can remain anonymous to the people you transfer or receive payments from.
This is due to the fact that in order to transfer money from the outside world into the app, a bank account must be linked to it.
There are workarounds for this, but they can be challenging and necessitate the use of an operational anonymous payment method. And this kind of negates the whole point of the situation.
Beyond just sending and receiving money, Cash App offers a variety of services. These comprise purchasing and investing in cryptocurrencies (which could come in handy for some other anonymous transactions).
Once great thing I love with the Cash App is the financial aid (cash advance) it offers to customers through a borrow feature which lets eligible users borrow money from Cash App.
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4. Cryptocurrency — Semi-Anonymous Payment Methods
When people want to make any kind of anonymous payment, they frequently think about cryptocurrency (also known as a "crypto"). But doing so can be a mistake.
Cryptocurrencies are not anonymous as you might think.
In reality, every transaction involving Bitcoin and the majority of other cryptocurrencies is visible to everyone on Earth and is recorded in a public ledger. Each and every transaction is recorded on this public ledger, known as a blockchain. While it does not contain any personal data, it does provide the addresses of each cryptocurrency wallet that was used in the transaction. Conceptually, a blockchain transaction record does not look like this:
At 12:00:00 on 12/04/2021 Heinrich Long bought a cigar from John Doe for $10.00 US.
But rather, it looks like this:
At 12:00:00 on 12/04/2021 someone sent 0.00001 BTC from wallet address X to wallet address Y.
This record contains no overtly personal information.
However, since every single transaction of this kind has ever been recorded on the blockchain, it is possible to search these transactions for data that can be used to identify participants.
To know the point at which money was transferred into one of the wallets engaged in the transaction using a credit card or a bank transfer, you may, for instance, search through all transactions associated with each address, or when a user exchanged some of their cryptocurrency for dollars and deposited those amounts in a bank.
Of course, a variety of organizations are striving to identify the parties involved in cryptocurrency transactions by de-anonymizing the transactions.
However complicated the actual procedure is, the point remains that cryptocurrency transactions are not entirely anonymous. However, you can think of them as pseudonymous or somewhat anonymous.
This is due to the time-consuming and expensive process involved in searching through a blockchain to try to identify someone.
The US Treasury Department forces KYC (Know Your Customer) regulations on bitcoin wallets.
Uncertainty surrounds whether this intrusive policy would actually be implemented, but it adds to the case for partially anonymous cryptocurrency transactions.
Not all cryptocurrencies offer the same level of anonymity.
For instance, Monero addresses some of the privacy issues that come with Bitcoin.
Also Read: Best Cryptocurrency Mining Apps
Cryptocurrency Prepaid Cards
Prepaid cards that are funded using bitcoin instead of, or in addition to, fiat money are also available from some services. Both physical and virtual prepaid cards are available.
Nexo card is an example of such prepaid cards.
The fact that they provide you with a card number to use for cryptocurrency transactions rather than forcing you to deal exclusively with businesses who accept cryptocurrencies directly is crucial in our eyes.
Your privacy and anonymity are slightly strengthened when you use a crypto prepaid card.
After all, there are many more individuals in the world using cards to make purchases than there are using cryptocurrency.
Fully Anonymous Payment Methods
Though many sources might report otherwise, there are some fully anonymous payment methods that let you send payments without any traces. They are as follows.
1. Anonymous Prepaid Cards — Fully Anonymous Payment Method
Prepaid cards were mentioned earlier as a type of partially anonymous payment method. But they can also be used for completely anonymous payments with a little care.
That applies to prepaid cards, including gift cards, credit cards, debit cards, and whatever other names a vendor chooses to give them.
The process of using the cards is very similar to what I mentioned in the "partially anonymous" portion. You must make sure of three things if you want to use prepaid cards to make completely anonymous payments:
Purchase your prepaid cards initially in-person at a supermarket, pharmacy, or department store using cash. You should be completely anonymous when doing this and not be asked for any identification.
As far as we are aware, at least in the United States, there is no necessity to present ID when purchasing these kind of cards.
Before attempting to purchase a number of cards that have been maxed out, buy a card with a little denomination to check if the merchant requests identification.
In addition, avoid attempting to purchase several fully utilized cards everywhere. That can raise unwanted questions.
Secondly, if you use one of these cards to make a payment, never use your real name, email address, or phone number.
That kind of mistake is simple to make, therefore you don't want to mess things up by doing so. Once more, this is when a burner email service is helpful.
Thirdly, get a card that cannot be recharged online. You'll have to provide them with a bank account and other things if you do that. In case you do that, your anonymity will be gone.
2. Paysafecard — Anonymous Payment Method
Cash vouchers from Paysafecard combine a few advantages of cash and online services.
Paysafecard gift cards are available from merchants in numerous countries.
Since there will be no way to link the voucher numbers you use with any personally identifying information, paying with cash is a completely anonymous payment method.
A 16-digit PIN is printed on each voucher. To conduct anonymous online payments, you use this PIN.
According to the Paysafecard website, thousands of merchants accept the payment method.
Paysafecards are available in denominations of $10, $25, $50, and $100. You may link up to 10 cards together to complete larger purchases.
Again, this is a completely anonymous method of payment provided you purchase your Paysafecard voucher with cash.
There are however, two disadvantages of using the paysafecard:
- The only types of companies that appear to accept Paysafecard are online games and licensed online gambling parlors.
- It can be hard to find a business that will sell you Paysafecards. There are a limited number of vendors, and not all countries have even one vendor.
3. Cash — Fully Anonymous Payment Method
Cash is as anonymous as it gets when making transactions in the real world.
Give the enigmatic stranger a strange-looking paper, then take the loaf of bread, the top-secret papers, or the cigars and leave.
Do it in a dimly lit alleyway or another place where there aren't likely to be any witnesses or security cameras for even more privacy and mood.
Unfortunately, using cash for long-distance transactions isn't nearly as useful.
You might transfer a large amount of money through courier or wire it via Western Union, but both options require a lot of work, present risks, and may result in significant costs.
Additionally, some methods provide you greater room for error, such as automatically printing your return address on the package.
Since US dollars are the most widely used currency in the world, using them will help you hide your origin. Coins made of gold and silver could also be useful in particular situations.
Final Thoughts: Anonymous Payment Methods
With lots of cyber crimes occurring nowadays, it is important to keep our identity online private, most especially when dealing with finances.
Anonymous payment methods let you send payment privately without having to worry about your details being stolen by a con-artist.
Though these payment methods offer thorough security features, it is worth mentioning that no system is 100% secured. So, it is good to regularly follow the recommendations provided by these services to keep your information with them secure.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I pay someone anonymously?
Yes, you can pay someone anonymously by using the anonymous payment methods shown in this guide.
What is the most anonymous method of receiving online payments?
Cryptocurrencies and prepaid gift cards are the most anonymous methods of receiving online payments.
How can I pay without revealing identity?
Use prepaid gift cards, cryptocurrency or virtual cards to pay without revealing your identity.
Can I use my anonymous payment app outside the country?
This depends on both your cleverness and the app's regulations. Some apps only support one or a few countries, while others support several. To find out, you'll need to review their Terms of Service (ToS). Regardless of the app's rules, a clever user will utilize a VPN to make it appear as though they are in a nation that the app does support.