Where to Buy a 100£ Debit/Gift Card Anonymously?

[PROFRBcom]

I want a 100£ debit/gift card to buy some trinkets online from a UK provider.
However, it seems that all they sell are cards one has to register in order to use?

Is there no such thing as simply walking into a corner store in London, slapping 100£ on the counter, and buying a Visa, Mastercard gift card? Every other country I have ever been to this was commonplace and readily available.

Am I missing something?

[baldidiot]

Not 100% sure of the rules but it's definitely not like in the the US where there are rows upon rows of them at the checkout.

You do get multi-shop giftcards (eg: One4All) but they're restricted to certain shops...

So it could be that they have to be registered to someone. Or maybe they're just not very popular and no one uses them.

[Sherlock]

They used to exist in EU maybe 7 years ago. Then they restricted them and then again and then it made no sense.
UK is not EU anymore, but until now was maybe under the same regulation.

I have never seen lately anonymous prepaid cards anywhere. Only in Japan, but it is not VISA/MC, e.g. Suica card.

[zhivka]

I think at Coingate you can buy gift cards with bitcoins. Isn't this exactly what you're looking for?

[baldidiot]

I think at Coingate you can buy gift cards with bitcoins. Isn't this exactly what you're looking for?

I’m in the UK and had a quick look at what was available to me - no general use prepaid cards, all for specific shops.

[Mattbar]

You could go into a shop and get a £100 Paysafecard voucher, which you can then use to buy stuff anonymously (if the place you buy from accepts paysafecards)

[baldidiot]

Do many online shops accept paysafecard? I thought it was more services / subscriptions / gambling.

[PROFRBcom]

They used to exist in EU maybe 7 years ago. Then they restricted them and then again and then it made no sense.
UK is not EU anymore, but until now was maybe under the same regulation.

I have never seen lately anonymous prepaid cards anywhere. Only in Japan, but it is not VISA/MC, e.g. Suica card.

That is strange, because every country I have ever visited, and looked for such a card, I was always able to find one easily.

I suppose OMG MONEY LAUNDERING!!!! is the reason one can not have $100 of anonymous credit in hand! God forbid one start a drug and human trafficking ring using corner store gift cards!

I think at Coingate you can buy gift cards with bitcoins. Isn't this exactly what you're looking for?

These are all specific stores as far as I can see, I just want a generic debit/gift card that can spend anywhere.

I’m in the UK and had a quick look at what was available to me - no general use prepaid cards, all for specific shops.

Alas, that is also what I saw.

You could go into a shop and get a £100 Paysafecard voucher, which you can then use to buy stuff anonymously (if the place you buy from accepts paysafecards)

I looked, they don't take PaySafe... ugh.

[Sherlock]

Yes, the moneylaundering was the reason.

To be honest those cards in Europe were used for it quite a lot. They worked like top up cards, so you could reuse it and reinsert there money in your local shop with cash. It was pretty useful for anonymous payments (cards worked even online in pre-bitcoin era).

It is a cultural thing: no one understands why not using cash directly instead.
Also nowadays you can not pay in EU with visa/mc card online without 2fa; 2fa is hard to imagine by a prepaid card.

South America is even more restrictive with banks/cards. Here each country is divided by local cartel of banks and big corps with branded credit cards. Often Mc/Visa is not compatible even in online and offline shops, because they like to have their banking systems fenced.

It is funny, as fintech develops, it is actually harder and harder to pay anything anywhere anyhow.

[PROFRBcom]

Well, the UK site I want to purchase from does NOT have 2FA, it just won't accept any of the small pre-paid debit cards I have acquired.

I was hoping one based in GBP would do the job and I would avoid FX fees by doing so.

I really don't care where the card comes from tbh, so long as it works for "international transactions", aka, on a UK website.

[Sherlock]

I am not sure how you know it does not have 2fa? Maybe we speak about different things.
When using any visa or mc in EU, it is mandatory to use 2fa, but it comes at the end of the payment. Since they did not accept your card, you could not see it. It can be well because your cards do not have 3dsecure or something like that.

The card you are looking for prolly do not exist anymore. Yes, I am too amazed how things stop working.

[Azureus]

Well, the UK site I want to purchase from does NOT have 2FA, it just won't accept any of the small pre-paid debit cards I have acquired.

I was hoping one based in GBP would do the job and I would avoid FX fees by doing so.

I really don't care where the card comes from tbh, so long as it works for "international transactions", aka, on a UK website.

I believe what you wanted was first restricted by AMLD4 European Union 2015/849 directive and then was basically banned by AMLD5 EU directive. As UK was part of the EU, it had to implement it a few years ago and now you probably have a lock-in effect. Something restrictive was implemented and there is zero chance it will be un-implemented.

What is still possible:
- you can buy prepaid cards on Bitrefill.com or Dundle.com or Egifter.com with Bitcoin/lightning network/Monero/Litecoin/other cryptocurrencies which are basic VISA/Mastercard cards that are semi-anonymous
There are a few problems:
- sometimes the provider (e.g. Dundle) will randomly block your order and request a scan of your ID, sometimes not
- some of those cards can be used in USA only, this applied to the Vanilla VISA as far as I know
- some of those cards do NOT have 3D Secure which makes them basically useless on 99% of EU/UK sites (this applied e.g. to the Visa Green Prepaid Gift card afaik)
- some cards do have 3D secure and can be used on some shops (this should be e.g. the Mastercard from Dundle) but they are often limited to 50-100€ and you will pay a 30% premium (you pay 30%+ for the card to be able to pay anonymously)
- some cards cannot be bought with certain IP (there is geo-block to PURCHASE the card but no block to use/redeem the card)
- most cards cannot be used in Asia and Africa

Paysafecard is probably the most useless and stupid service that exists today, perhaps it was somewhat usable in the past. Now there is country restriction (you cannot use card bought in one country as resident of another country) and there is also KYC/AML identification, so first you purchase their anonymous codes and to be able to use them, you must first de-anonymize yourself. They hire an agency that created them 25000+ positive reviews on Trustpilot but if you filter out only the 1-star and 2-star ones, you will learn how actually Paysafecard works. It is basically completely useless for anything else than maybe buying a 10$ game on Steam.

[baldidiot]

Well, the UK site I want to purchase from does NOT have 2FA, it just won't accept any of the small pre-paid debit cards I have acquired.

It's not the shop, it's the card - you tend to get a text code now to verify online purchases. Doesn't happen all the time but pretty common.

Can you just use paypal? A decent percentage of shops here seem to accept it.