Hi I apologise is this is the wrong forum but I wasn’t sure!
First off I know little to nothing about these things so please be gentle. Basically I write short stories and I would like to commission some art to illustrate them from artists on the internet. I had a PayPal account but I cancelled it when I became aware that the people I was sending money to had receipt of my real name which is quite distinctive. A few years ago I had a bad experience when a guy I was talking to online thought it would be an excellent idea to turn up unannounced at my front door, since them I’ve been a little, well a lot, paranoid about revealing my identity online.
I’m aware that you can set up a business account on PayPal but I want to keep everything absolutely squeaky-clean and above board so I don’t want to be doing anything questionable.
I’m a little unsure about buying stuff online in general and although I have a debit card I don’t have a credit card and I’m reluctant to link my bank account.
As a wise man once said, never get involved in things you don’t understand and I don’t understand this stuff.
Are you looking for a way to pay people anonymously, or to both send and receive money anonymously? Do you need any kind of protection - are you okay with payments that are unrecoverable?
Just to pay people anonymously and I would be OK with that as the sums would be fairly small with any given transaction. I’d just be worried about someone somehow gaining access to my bank account if I was paying directly from it or them getting hold of personal information, there are an awful lot of scams out there these days. Thanks.
How about just sending Amazon gift cards? You can send them in any custom amount by email or text message, and they are completely anonymous. There is a field for the sender’s name, but you can put anything in there, along with a message. You don’t need to set up any additional anonymous email address - the recipient will not see the email associated with your Amazon account, it is delivered direct from an Amazon corporate email account. I’ve never done it by text, but I assume that something similar happens.
You can even take that a step further by emailing the gift card to yourself and emailing the recipient the number. They can redeem it on their end to verify the funds.
Using a debit card is only indirectly linking your bank acct in that any funds charged to your debit card will be deducted from your bank acct; you’re not giving PayPal your bank acct #. if you card is lost or stolen you’ll get a new card with a new number but your underlying bank acct isn’t changing. There are privacy settings within PayPal that limit how much you are sharing & you can physically change your name to Celtic K or C Kitsune or… - It is supposed to be your legal name as on your ID but I doubt anyone is checking that it isn’t & it is changeable.
You might find someone to do your illustrations on the side but anyone doing that as a real business would most likely not want to be paid in amazon gift cards.