Author:
Frank | Category:
payments
The first thing you need to know about Wirecard is that it is not available from the US, my first attempt to open an account with this German company was using a US proxy and they quickly inform you that this service is not available for the US at the moment.
This time surfing to Wirecard from a European IP I did manage to open the account which is really easy and quick, you can do this in three steps with some basic information, the way Wirecard makes sure they know your identity is by asking you for your mobile phone number where they send an SMS instantly with a secret PIN number that you must then enter in their website to verify your account, maybe this is the reason why they dont accept US customers?
In some European countries in order to buy a mobile phone SIM card you need to show your passport or national ID which is then registered by the mobile phone shop and passed on to a register, so they can easily track down who owns what mobile number in case of being used for criminal activities, while in the US as I understand it, you can easily buy a mobile phone SIM card with cash which would make Wirecard verification process useless.
Once verified Wirecard gives me the IBAN number, Swift/Code and Account number, there are various ways to fund this account, I choose to do this via international bank transfer as I am not based in Germany, I use an online bank account, my bank charges me €3 for the transfer, this will also take a couple of days and Wirecard will charge me €1 for receiving the bank transfer too, total spent for funding the credit card, €4.
Once the account has been credited I now have a virtual Mastercard credit card number with CCV, expiry date and a control panel where I can follow the purchases made and money spent.
Summing up, this is not an anonymous payment service, if anyone has access to your bank account statement they will see a bank transfer to an account in Germany and they will not see that you just bought a subscription to Milton Twins but if your government wants you badly they will investigate further into that bank transfer and get the record of your financial activities from them, specially for big money transactions that may arise money laundering suspicion.
Wirecard is an excellent service for those that have a bad credit record, as long as you have a bank account you can get a valid Mastercard with them, it will also make more expensive and time consuming for your government to spy on you, as a rule of thumb, unless you are a high target, your government will not invest great resources to track you down, there are priorities, so try not to be one of them and if you become a target make big brother to waste as much time and money as possible it will make them to think it twice if it is really worth to waste three hours of paperwork getting an international warrant for something that may or may not be of interest.
Wirecard also offers a virtual bank account in Germany through Wirecard Bank , but this is a separate service and although it seems a good idea having an international bank account, it involves some more work than getting a virtual credit card and the €9.99 monthly fee has put me off testing it.
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