Hacker News Reader

Comment by Chilinot | Hacker News Reader

I'm not entirely sure how you would launder money through this service. From what i can tell no money is actually passed through it. It just generates a temporary credit card which is never billed. It is just used to bypass the "please enter your credit card for this free trial" prompts.

View on HN

I'm talking specifically about this type of card: https://justuseapp.com/privacy-card

That looks like it definitely allows transactions.

Ah, yes that is sketchy.

Is it? How is it any different from something like Privacy.com?

I don't see them claiming they don't keep track of the transactions, so what's the problem? It's just a temporary card so the merchant doesn't know your original one, but in case of problems the intermediary still knows who you are, what your original card is, and who you paid to.

Isn't this just a standard top-up card?

yes, except it is generated and maintained by a faceless, nameless holding company in the US.

I'm a businessman trying to hide my wealth, I get one of these cards and top it up with 100k from my CAyman islands bank account, and use it for all my daily spending. That's a very common method of tax evasion.

Strip could now be on the hook for facilitating this, which means they need to trust justuseapp to do proper KYC that complies with global anti money laundering policies, etc. That is a HUGE task, and if they get it wrong, the consequences are serious. So, when stripe says they're worried; they're right to be.

The intented use of this companies service might be altruistic, but it's really easily absued for nefarious purposes.

This is not possible. You cannot fund your account with more than $30 per day unless you are have the highest verification and right now, the limit at those levels is just $60.

It will take you years to move $100k at $60 per day.

It's entirely possible for an attacker with 100 stolen identities to make 100 $30/day accounts and move $3,000/day. or $6,000/day if they've stolen the person's government ID. It'll take just over 2 weeks to move $100k at that rate.

They could do this with literally any prepaid card, though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com