Recently we received a unexpected large (to us) charge via PayPal on a software service we had canceled several years ago. To make a long story short, we could not get our money back.
At about the same time looking at crypto currency articles. Facebook flooded me with ads.
I had been wanting to get a prepaid Visa debit card. For use online at sites I did not trust. With today's level of big companies being hacked, that should be everybody.
Also had looked at getting an internet only bank a few years ago but could not find a match for me.
Well things all came together.
Coinbase.com was giving $5.00 in bitcoin to open a free Wallet/account. Well having no money to invest but wanting too and also learn, this was hit. Tbey in all gave me about $25.00 in different crypto tokens. They also got hacked.
While I did not have to give coinbase a bank accout or credit card to set my self up. Of course they keep pushing for one.
So here is the deal I wanted. A Debit Card that never had seen any link to our bank account or other credit cards. That I could add cash to locally and easily. No fees, money never expires if not used.
Along comes an ad for a phone app debit card, no fees, can ad cash to it at many name brand stores (stores to charge a fee when doing this. $4.95 at Wagreens today.
Card/app I picked was Passbook by Remeny. They are pushing this card for people without a US citizenship and SSN. And for overseas money transfers. After a lot of googling, I went for it.
Love it, you get message right away on any card activity, customer service is very responsive and fast. You can disable and enable card by phone app at any time.
So I put $20.00 on it at Walgrees today. Yes it cost me $4.95 fee to Walgreens, fee would have been the same had I put a few hundred dollars on it. Which I did not have.
Gave coinbase the Card, they put two charges on card and ask me to te them the amounts, to verify it as right account.
Passbook messaged me the charges in almost real time.
It took several hours for Coinbase to remove charges. When that was done, I turned off card. And we leave it off till need it again.
The Chain is fully broken.
