How to pay your bills?

[Puffaluffagus]

I don't have a bank account and I don't want one.

Cash is stored off site in a safe location, and one that could never be connected to me.

Netspend has prepaid cards that you can put up to 5K at a time on, and no SOC required.
All my bills auto debit off the card.
This is what works for me.

 

[hamstring]

Can you get a prepaid card without a social security number (aka SSN)? For reloadable prepaid cards with the Visa or MasterCard logo on them, the answer is no. Why not? After the attack of 9/11, the government passed the US Patriot Act. All prepaid card companies now follow the rules under the act, which require them to verify the identity of the prepaid card applicant. This is to protect Americans from future terrorists trying to remain anonymous with false identities and credit cards or prepaid cards that are untraceable to them. Hence, this is a good thing.

As authorized by the Act, The Department of the Treasury, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, and the seven federal financial regulators issued final rules that require certain financial institutions to establish procedures to verify the identity of new accountholders. Not only does this protect against terrorist financing, but also money laundering and identity theft.

However, you can get a prepaid gift card without a social security number. Perhaps the law needs to be stricter there as well, to prevent terrorists from buying equipment at Best Buy or Home Depot.

What do prepaid card companies and credit card companies have to do under the Patriot Act? 1) verify the identity of anyone trying to open an account. 2) keep cardholder identity information on file. 3) make sure the applicant does not appear on a list of known or suspected terrorists or terrorist organizations.

Financial institutions now gather such standard information as a customer’s name, address, date of birth and a taxpayer identification number (for U.S. persons, typically a social security number and for non-U.S. persons, a similar number from a government-issued document).

 

[Securityfirst]

gas stations and drug stores have these cards called "Green Dot" and they are reloadable. when i used to use them for online poker they didnt require a social. they also sell them online, because some states dont sell them;(think its because of the no social security #)

hope this helps

These cards are only good for "laundering" up to 4k a month , if you do 4k 2 months in a row they will shut off your card. I do not know the requirements for getting a new card though they ought to be simple.

 

[growclean]

By the way. No Banks or Credit Unions will take us in our area if I am upfront about our buisness. So the feds have put enough pressure on these institutions that they will refuse to do business with legal businesses in our state, because they are scared of our own Federal Government? Smells like freedom to me.... So, now the position that they put us in is to open an account and be decietful about what our business is. I know that there are several "white lies" I can tell to do this, but why should I have to. Plus then, when we get "discovered" again, it makes us look bad....


This is all over the control of plant that has yet to be proven harmful, yet the benefits are being discovered daily...

 

[Dislexus]

Netspend has prepaid cards that you can put up to 5K at a time on, and no SOC required.
All my bills auto debit off the card.
This is what works for me.

Great recommendation Puff... but inaccurate..

At first Netspend required no info, hell they had anonymous cardless 'e-card' accounts for online transactions but some russians fucked them lol.. then 9/11 happened. Federal government requires all card corps to gather some sort of idenfying number, and mail to a physical address not a mailbox. Also tightened down the mailbox places after 9/11.

Thing is... the law requires them to gather it... it doesn't require them to verify it. Verifying costs money, and they really don't do it unless you have a lot on your account.

Puff bro you need to keep deposits below 2K, they have to legally report those and they do. Instead of depositing 5k at once, just spread three deposits over a week, each slightly less than 2k. Their cards are used like crazy for all kinds of shady stuff and they know it, lol...

Their fraud dept is analyzing reporting tools for large deposits, large balances, multiple cards sent to same address, etc. Large deposits are always assumed to be either drug money (street level dealers use NetSpend so they dont get robbed), or you're trying to hide the money from the government/your wife soon to be ex...

I would keep your total balance below 5k, that is pushing it and gets a yellow flag in their fraud/moneylaundering crew, but its not unheard of. 10k would begin to raise eyebrows, 20k+ draws even more attention. I guarantee your account would be actively monitored at 50k+, and definitely investigated 100k+.

Now they may feel inclined to freeze your funds until you give them an SSN or other #.

So if this happens first you tell them you don't want your identity stolen, a crackhead employee or hacker could steal that info. If they give you a schpiel about "oh your data and money are secure with us" tell them:

--Oh yeah? What about that in-house security breach in 2001 or 2002, when Netspend laid off their tech staff and they took out the server on their way out the door and completely covered their tracks? Customers couldn't get access to their money for a week! So don't tell me my data and money are secure, it is not and never has been. Now unless you want to send me a check for the remainder of my balance and close my account, you will take identifying info that can't be used to wreck my life..--

They accept other #s besides SSN format because not all their customers are US citizens.. literally its just a alphanumeric field, to take green card #s, mexican #s, DBA #s etc.. If you never give them a reason to they won't make an effort to verify it.

 

[Dislexus]

Also for you actual business/collective entities...

You can call Netspend, come at them like a small business owner wanting to use their cards for your payroll. They are willing to set something up.. send you multiple cards and no dollar transaction fee for your employees.. they like that volume because they get a % of each transaction from merchants' fees.

 

[Guest 150314]

By the way. No Banks or Credit Unions will take us in our area if I am upfront about our buisness. So the feds have put enough pressure on these institutions that they will refuse to do business with legal businesses in our state, because they are scared of our own Federal Government? Smells like freedom to me.... So, now the position that they put us in is to open an account and be decietful about what our business is. I know that there are several "white lies" I can tell to do this, but why should I have to. Plus then, when we get "discovered" again, it makes us look bad....


This is all over the control of plant that has yet to be proven harmful, yet the benefits are being discovered daily...

Tell them you run a nursery and tree production business. You need a good accountant who knows the truth about what you are doing, they will find a way to make it work. The bank/government doesn't give a shit about where your money comes from as long as you don't tell them upfront that its from marijuana. As long as you are paying taxes on it and have a real business going...

 

[growclean]

Follow up for anyone interested....

One bank bit...

A small startup bank with one branch, decided that they would come "inspect" our place. I don't know if they thought that they might see U-Haul trucks of weed headed to a non med state or something, but they wanted to see. So we let them see... our store. Only special people get to see the grow areas, and the bank ain't so special...

Well, they approved us with the condition that we would pay a monthly fee for us to be monitored. They say that the monitor watches all high risk accounts daily to look for "discrepancies". These discrepancies are basically "odd" cash transactions. The list of all high risk accounts is handed over to the federal auditors at every visit. Other "high risk" buisnesses just include all other heavy cash buisnesses like bars, casinos, check cashing places, etc. So we had to declare an average weekly cash deposit amount. They understand that the bulk of our deposits will be cash. We should not deposit more cash than we have declared prior to having another meeting with the bank, at which time they will reasses their "risk". They used phrases like "buisnesses like yours create a risk to our bank". I am not one to say quiet and said my peace about whether it was me or the federal government that was creating a risk. As we, like the bank were perfectly legal under state laws, as marijuana had been recognized to have many medical benefits, in contrary to the federal governments definition. Our state, like many others have pointed to facts and asked questions without recieving proper answers. I also question the idea that every rule and question that I had a disagreement with was created as part of the Patriot Act, whose specific goal was to fight terrorism, yet was now just being used as a tool to track someone who openly and publicly admits to growing marijuana. I explained all this with the apology that I understand that it wasn't neseccarily the agent or banks fault (nescicarrily, but in propigation, yes).

Conclussion, we took the account. We will run everything through it and pay our share and pray that we are left alone. Some will ask why we didn't just register as another industry. The answer is that we are located in a small community. It is apparent that the banks have been spoken to by someone, as this is a large problem for all the dispensaries in our area and we contacted EVERY bank. Any bank would have shortly realized that they had been lied to and I am sure that it would have created a worse situation for us then just being up front. We don't have anything to hide, and it seems so random on what may get the feds attention anyway. So hopefully the bank will be "on our side" now, and won't have any reasons to think that we are raising red flags because we have been upfront.

At one point though, the agent did tell me that with a heavy volume of cash, we were already on that list at our old bank. They just aren't upfront with YOU! Every bank does it, and they are more scared of the feds now then ever...

You can love your country and hate your government at the same time!

 

[Anti]

You can love your country and hate your government at the same time!

If you love your country you MUST hate your government. The people that love both ARE the problem!

 

[TripleDraw27]

all kindsa kinky shit.......

 

[GanjaGoblin]

If you are looking to deposit a large amount of cash into a bank legally. Just go to a casino, trade your cash for chips, play for an hour and cash out. Counts as a win, they will give ya receipt. Can deposit in bank but you pay taxes on it.

Maybe not something to do all the time, but will work for one "big" win.

 

[gettogro]

why cant you use a personal account. you could deposit a couple grand a month cash in the ATM to pay bills. Dont even have to see a teller.

 

[yortbogey]

U need a 2nd legit bizniz to funnel money into....a high cash operation.....Bar, Coffe shop, concessions.....anything that is steady cash flow.....laundry mat, CarWash, ....
use U knogg'in....and be creative......
dog walking service is very cash friendly

 

[Strainhunter]

....

So how do I pay bills via a prepay without coughing up personal information?

......

Easy:

Foreign US$ bank account using a credit card associated with that account.

There are banks in Canada and the Caribbean who would love to do business with you as they already are with many others.

 

[bagend12]

all my bills get paid via cash/m.o. everybody loves cash!