Ninjastic
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Anonymous Prepaid Visa/Mastercard
by
nauru
on 22/07/2010, 04:26:41 UTC
Hi

I'm new to this forum and I have an idea that I'd like to see if anyone is interested in.

I'm from the Republic of Nauru and we use the Australian Dollar as our currency. I have installed Bitcoin and find it very useful for privacy purposes. Nauru is famous for privacy afforded to it's citizens and as an offshore banking centre/tax haven. You can read more about Nauru at Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru.

A local bank (which also happens to be a top 5 bank in Australia) offers prepaid, anonymous Visa and MasterCard for use on the islands and over the Internet. While I'm not really able to post the cards outside Nauru/Tuvalu/Kiribati, people who bought them on the islands are able to take them overseas and use them anywhere Visa/Mastercard is accepted or over the Internet. So I don't imagine there would be any problems selling them for Bitcoins.

I would like to offer the cards in denominations of AUD$50 for Visa or AUD$25 or AUD$50 for MasterCard. You wont physically receive the card, you would just receive the number, expiry date and CVV2. There is no name printed on the cards. There is also a AUD$5.95 issuance fee and the cards can't be re-loaded. So for AUD$55.95 in Bitcoins, you would receive AUD$50 in credit.

The problems I see so far are:

  • Trust - how do I verify that I am able to offer this service legitimately? I don't see why the bank would complain, but I'd rather not name them. They get their issuance fee in any case.
  • Cards - People might prefer a physical card. I may be able to post the cards, but it would take a long time to reach the US/EU from the middle of the Pacific Ocean!
  • Price - Bitcoin exchangers seem to only be in USD or Euro and not AUD. How do I determine a fair market value in Bitcoin?
  • Fees - if you use the cards for purchases in any currency other than AUD, you will be charged a 2.5% currency conversion fee
  • Anonymity - how should people contact me so I can give them a Bitcoin address to pay to, without revealing their identity?
  • Legitimacy - I'm not a registered business nor do I have a bank licence, I'm just someone who buys cards at the bank. To become a registered offshore bank in Nauru costs $25,000 and is out of my price range.
  • Automation - at the moment you would have to pay to a Bitcoin address, I'd go to the bank, buy the card, and then send the numbers. It would be better if I could buy a whole bunch of cards and load the numbers into a database, to automatically issue them when paid.
  • Website - can anyone proxy purchase a .com.nr domain name for me and anonymize the whois? Does anyone other than vekja.net offer hosting paid in Bitcoins?

Thanks!