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Comment by LinuxBender | Hacker News Reader

Question for people in the US that use Hetzner. Billing-wise, do they show up as a US presence? With Fastmail I have to disable some security on one of my bank accounts for a day every couple of years to add credit to Fastmail as they are based out of the AU as it pertains to billing. Would it be the same for Hetzner?

Fastmail has earned some trust from me so I don't mind having two or three years of credit on my account. With VPS/server providers and registrars I usually stay under 1 year so I can walk away without losing much. This would be more of a hassle is why I ask.

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I am in the US and have been using Fastmail for years. I have no problem with automated billing to a consumer credit card. I have recently begun using Hetzner as well, and this also bills to the same card. I just looked at the Hetzner charge, and it shows up in the CC transactions as "hetzner.com" with a US domestic phone number associated.

My guess is that your CC has more strict foreign alerting than mine, so perhaps this is not very helpful information. But it is certainly possible, and perhaps Hetzner billing support (and Fastmail too!) have some advice for how to smooth things over with the bank.

The non US companies I have tried this with in the past also had a US number, but their receiving account was non-US and I am fairly certain that is what they trigger off of. The protection in place is intentional and if anything I have asked the bank for even tighter controls. I want something closer to the 3rd parties that allow making specific rules, unique card numbers for specific vendors but getting a bank to do that is difficult. My card does not have strict foreign alerting, it has explicit blocks of non US that I put in place. If someone outside of the US tries to use the card, it completely disables the card until I walk into the bank which is not a problem as they are just down the road and they all know me. The only option with Fastmail is to disable my protections for a day. I don't mind that as they have earned some limited trust from me and they are inexpensive. VPS and server providers can get more expensive really fast so I am less inclined to do that unless they show up as a US entity as far as the bank can see. That's why I was asking if others here also had to disable their protection or if they know for certain they show up as a US entity.

I use virtual cards for this

What kind of Mickey Mouse bank do you use that requires you to jump through hoops to send money to Australian or German businesses as if their were third-world countries? Is this common in the US?

Most banks in the US have a feature to block non US entities from billing their card if they so desire. It cuts down on fraud I dont know how much and also means that when fraud is being committed it is more likely that law enforcement can go after the people doing it as they may be in the same country. Not perfect, but nothing ever is. Some criminals are dumb and/or lazy. I assume non US banks also have something similar, to block countries outside of their own. Is this not the case? If this makes my bank Mickey Mouse then I guess that makes me Donald Duck or Goofy as I am very happy with the feature hence why I loathe the idea of disabling it for even a day.

In Sweden our banks block insecure international payments by default, those without a second verification step (using Swedish BankID). You can unlock your card for 60m to insecure transactions globally, mostly to deal with US recipients actually.

My non-us bank has a feature to block all non-3ds (aka, us transactions) outside of a 100km radius of my phone’s current location. I have to specifically authorize/exempt us payments (like GitHub).

I've been playing with Hetzner since June. One of their billing options is PayPal, which is what I've been using. That should come through as a US charge. Note: their PayPal option isn't a recurring payment; they send you an invoice each month and then you have to go into the billing page and pay it via PayPal. It's kind of tedious, not sure why they set it up like that.

P.S. before I put FastMail on my credit card, I used to have it on my bank debit card. My bank charged me some silly international fee, like $5.00 or something just for the privilege of using my own bank account, but I never had an issue with the actual payment. If possible, I recommend putting FastMail and Hetzner on a credit card and then pay the credit card with your bank account.

I had paid them with Paypal some time ago but I quickly cancelled my Paypal account of 20 years without hesitation after their first pass / attempt at using the power of money to control speech. [1]

If possible, I recommend putting FastMail and Hetzner on a credit card and then pay the credit card with your bank account.

I can pay them with a debit card but I block the ability on purpose. That's what my question was all about, not having to disable a security feature that I had the bank enable. If they have a US presence then they would be permitted. I've intentionally never applied for a credit card. I only spend money that I have. Most of my transactions are in cash. There's just a few things I use a debit card for, servers being one of them.

[1] - https://fortune.com/2022/10/10/paypal-users-fine-misinformat...

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