2 days ago • 100%

Seeking consumer privacy focused paypal alternative in the US, prefer FOSS if possible. Any suggestions?

I'd bet you can guess why

30 comments

There is no privacy-focused PayPal alternative in the US, in part because US money transfer laws and policies (e.g. Know Your Customer) directly oppose privacy.

However, there are a couple of new projects that might eventually lead to something less bad for privacy than PayPal is:

GNU Taler, if they ever get any exchanges, and they either figure out how to mitigate the high fees for wire transfers or use some other settlement method when people on different exchanges make small payments. (Their plan to use batch wire transfers won't help until the exchanges get a lot of adoption and frequent use. Of course, high fees discourage adoption and use, so this might not ever happen.)

FedNow, if banks ever use it to offer appealing person-to-person payment services instead of just using it for themselves and their business customers.
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- Monero as the current fiat system becomes more and more untenable and people look for a solution not controlled by governments.
  
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  Cryptocurrencies are not reliably fungible, nor stable, nor widely accepted. They have their uses, but they are not suitable replacements for PayPal and not what OP asked for.
  
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- Taler looks like a cool project.
  
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- Thanks for the input
  
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Cash or Crypto is about all I can think of..

If your looking to move money from a bank to someone else's bank, I don't think you can expect to have much privacy in that from the parties actually making the transfer happen?

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- I'm more looking to keep legal transaction data private in the sense of not being shared or sold. If that's even possible ever-the-more.
  
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  What about just wire transfer? Everything goes through your bank anyway. That’s what I’ve replaced PayPal with a while ago.
  
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  Best option I can think of is privacy.com
  
  You can create virtual cards linked to your bank account and the transaction data is masked when processed by you bank. All my bank transactions show up as NSA Gift Shop. My bank doesn't know where I'm spending my money. Yes you have to trust privacy.com...
  
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  I think there is CC masking service Lois rossamnn shills that that's prolly easiest route for what youa re looking.
  
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Monero?

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- This
  
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https://www.privacyguides.org/en/advanced/payments/

Monero is the only privacy digital cash equivalent I'm aware of. There are a limited number of vendors who will accept it, and any of your friends who you can convince to take monero will also accept it

https://kycnot.me/?t=service

Here's a list of known services that accept it. Things like VPNs, web hosting, email hosting, game hosting, internet services basically

Any of the other payment systems, the bank systems like zelle, PayPal, etc ... They all have the problem of introducing a third party into your transactions. Who will then almost certainly sell your data

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- You can also use monero (and other cryptocurrencies) with gift cards.
  
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- Thanks for those links.
  
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- They all have the problem of introducing a third party into your transactions. Who will then almost certainly sell your data
  
  Shoulda held on to cash harder....
  
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I'd bet you can guess why

If your use case is illegal and requires anonymity, digital money transactions are dangerous due to the US law requirements, even if the system is FOSS. Use cash or cryptocurrency with good opsec in such cases.

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- PayPal recently announced it’ll start selling customer information.
  
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  The barstards
  
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  Oh
  
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- Nothing illegal, just good consumer privacy practice.
  
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  Ok then sorry for suspecting.
  
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If money is involved there's most likely KYC so... no?

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- And that's okay. Just looking to break with the enshitification movement.
  
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