i’m a us citizen, currently living in the usa. i’d like to send money internationally via paypal, without disclosing my real name to the recipient (as a rule, i use a pseudonym for as much as possible when i’m travelling outside the usa and western europe)
i’m not trying to conceal this gift or my identity from the us govt or bypass the KYC rules. and if there’s a court case, i’m ok with my identity being revealed to the recipient - i just don’t want it revealed automatically. ideally, paypal would support this use-case, but they don’t seem to have provisions for it. i’ve tried creating a paypal with a pseudonym, but haven’t been able to send money funded via a prepaid card (which makes sense, because of KYC)
is this doable ? maybe using a virtual card to fund a paypal, eg privacy-dot-com or ironvest ? any other ideas ?
anything that allowed me to send $100 would be useful, and being able to do it a few times would be a bonus (but lifetime, i’m not expecting to send more than $1000). my friend group seems to be tied to paypal, so unfortunately, i’m not interested in non-paypal solutions, at least for the moment
The only option I can think of is some sort of privacy-preserving cryptocurrency or physically mailing cash. Every other method I can think of would have your real name attached to it.
This is probably the best answer even if you were hoping to solve it via PayPal. Something like Monero, cash in person (or by mail if needed) or money order or something like that are all going to be better than PayPal. Gift cards could also work depending on what and why you are sending funds. Some of those have no ID requirements under certain values and are often just digital codes rather than physical cards. PayPal is far from great in a number of ways, not the least of which is privacy or pseudonimity.
Most locales have money transmitter laws, so if you are using a third party service rather than something like handing cash over in person, you are typically expected to include identifying information and I’m sure any “workarounds” would be in violation of PayPal’s terms of service.
And in most places I think you are also supposed to do this even for cash over varying threshold amounts, though likely not for the one-off $100 or less amounts you are interested in. This isn’t legal advice and all those disclaimers, blah blah blah.