You can pay for a gay escapade

[lovingboth]

Along with someone else, I do websites for escorts. Confidentiality is a Big Thing in this market, and one thing that's been useful is taking payments via Amazon gift certificates. You can only spend the money at Amazon, but that's not been any sort of problem.

Their big feature in this context is that they're anonymous: if you don't add a note, there's no clue as to who sent it to your email address...

... until recently, when Amazon have started adding what they think the sender is called, in the same way that PayPal have always done.

I'll probably continue accepting them - my Amazon spend is not zero, cough, and no-one cares about having Amazon appear on bank statements etc - but is there a useful, simple and stable anonymous remote payment method left?

Some people use mobile top-ups, but my mobile spend is zero plus the five or six quid a month for data plus more calls than I use. Bitcoin's lack of stability rules that out, plus there are too many steps involved. PayPal is possible, but I'd prefer something that doesn't do refunds.

Comments

[lovingboth]

I very strongly suspect that will still show what Amazon think the original purchaser is called.

[katieastrophe]

Having done it myself I can verify it doesn't. (I receive codes for doing online surveys, and have also bought myself cards in the past, when they've been doing "buy £X in gift cards and get £Y free offers.)

[katieastrophe]

Next time I have a code (should be in next few days based on current survey points balance), I will take screenshots you can use to reassure yourself and your clients, if that would be helpful?

[lovingboth]

It will be interesting to see, but a) this is a very recent change, so unless you've bought something for yourself in the past week, it was probably the old anonymous setup and b) I wonder if reward bulk purchases will be shown differently.

[katieastrophe]

I have bought in the last week using a gift card - but yes, the other explanation is possible. Of course, you could test it yourself by buying yourself a certificate and emailing it to yourself, to see what putting the code into the website gives you?