チャノさん＠C103, 2日目、東ヒ48a on Nostr: Some Thoughts on SpendIt Finance I was recently scrolling through Monerica (a very ...
Some Thoughts on SpendIt Finance
I was recently scrolling through Monerica (a very useful resource for XMR users, btw) and I ran across one of their sponsored additions... a service called SpendIt, hosted at https://spendit.finance
SpendIt advertises itself as "Your anonymous Visa prepaid card, funded by your crypto". It offers a service similar to several other outfits like Cake Pay Cards, CoinCards, etc. You send X amount of cryptocurrency Y, you gain access to a virtual prepaid credit card worth dollar value Z, and you spend it at the store of your choice (providing they don't require 3D Secure on transactions, which these kind of prepaids don't offer).
What struck me about SpendIt was how they allowed Visa prepaid card purchase with XMR and zero KYC. Bitcoin or USDT or some other transparent blockchain coin I'd understand, but it was surprising to me for any banking partner (in this case Pathward N.A. ) to sign off on giving anonymous credit cards to nameless internet ghosts sending dark money from out of the Phantom Zone.
I saw on their website that they had an affiliate program, so I decided to dig deeper. I asked some questions, assuming that surely their affiliates would need to provide some kind of ID, if only for payouts. To my further surprise, I was told that no ID was required, and that payout for affiliate earnings could actually be done in crypto. Which kind of crypto I'm not certain of, because I'd need to earn at least $50 worth before I could attempt a withdrawal.
(For the record, I do have an affiliate link from them now, and in theory I could use it to send customers their way and earn a cut. I'm not doing that... at least not yet, because I'm not convinced I fully trust this service).
"SpendIt" as a corporate entity is basically a ghost itself, that I can see. They claim to be a small startup headed by two people... "Martin" and "Louis", based out of France (even though their cards are in US dollars, and as far as I can tell are intended for US vendors primarily). Support emails from them were sent by a "Martin Leroux", who doesn't have any kind of history I can find in publicly available sources, save for a Reddit account with a 2 year posting history and some other account on a review site, just to list and claim ownership of his own business.
The bank, Pathward (formerly Metabank), has a bunch of ESG and Diversity shit on their site... not sure if just lip service or if they're whole hog into it, but it just makes this a bigger puzzle to me.
The utility of prepaid credit cards (as opposed to debit cards) is limited, I'll admit, so it's not as if this is a gaping hole in the financial system. But I have to ask myself how a business based out of the EU of all places can get away with this. If it's a legit startup flying by the seat of its pants, I can only assume some kind of regulatory hammer will come down on it eventually.
If it's a honeypot, though, I have to wonder what its creators could stand to gain from it. It's certainly true that an XMR prepaid Visa used to buy physical goods can be linked to an address via shipping records, but Stealth Addresses means even SpendIt wouldn't know the sender address of any XMR payments it receives, so there's not a lot of useful intel gained aside from "this person has Monero and is using it to buy stuff".
I'm holding on to this affiliate link to see if it pans out, and my concerns can be put to rest, but in the meantime... idk, I just want to keep an eye on these guys.
I was recently scrolling through Monerica (a very useful resource for XMR users, btw) and I ran across one of their sponsored additions... a service called SpendIt, hosted at https://spendit.finance
SpendIt advertises itself as "Your anonymous Visa prepaid card, funded by your crypto". It offers a service similar to several other outfits like Cake Pay Cards, CoinCards, etc. You send X amount of cryptocurrency Y, you gain access to a virtual prepaid credit card worth dollar value Z, and you spend it at the store of your choice (providing they don't require 3D Secure on transactions, which these kind of prepaids don't offer).
What struck me about SpendIt was how they allowed Visa prepaid card purchase with XMR and zero KYC. Bitcoin or USDT or some other transparent blockchain coin I'd understand, but it was surprising to me for any banking partner (in this case Pathward N.A. ) to sign off on giving anonymous credit cards to nameless internet ghosts sending dark money from out of the Phantom Zone.
I saw on their website that they had an affiliate program, so I decided to dig deeper. I asked some questions, assuming that surely their affiliates would need to provide some kind of ID, if only for payouts. To my further surprise, I was told that no ID was required, and that payout for affiliate earnings could actually be done in crypto. Which kind of crypto I'm not certain of, because I'd need to earn at least $50 worth before I could attempt a withdrawal.
(For the record, I do have an affiliate link from them now, and in theory I could use it to send customers their way and earn a cut. I'm not doing that... at least not yet, because I'm not convinced I fully trust this service).
"SpendIt" as a corporate entity is basically a ghost itself, that I can see. They claim to be a small startup headed by two people... "Martin" and "Louis", based out of France (even though their cards are in US dollars, and as far as I can tell are intended for US vendors primarily). Support emails from them were sent by a "Martin Leroux", who doesn't have any kind of history I can find in publicly available sources, save for a Reddit account with a 2 year posting history and some other account on a review site, just to list and claim ownership of his own business.
The bank, Pathward (formerly Metabank), has a bunch of ESG and Diversity shit on their site... not sure if just lip service or if they're whole hog into it, but it just makes this a bigger puzzle to me.
The utility of prepaid credit cards (as opposed to debit cards) is limited, I'll admit, so it's not as if this is a gaping hole in the financial system. But I have to ask myself how a business based out of the EU of all places can get away with this. If it's a legit startup flying by the seat of its pants, I can only assume some kind of regulatory hammer will come down on it eventually.
If it's a honeypot, though, I have to wonder what its creators could stand to gain from it. It's certainly true that an XMR prepaid Visa used to buy physical goods can be linked to an address via shipping records, but Stealth Addresses means even SpendIt wouldn't know the sender address of any XMR payments it receives, so there's not a lot of useful intel gained aside from "this person has Monero and is using it to buy stuff".
I'm holding on to this affiliate link to see if it pans out, and my concerns can be put to rest, but in the meantime... idk, I just want to keep an eye on these guys.