Updated on: September 24, 2024
No payment method is completely anonymous, but some get pretty close. Being anonymous means something different for pretty much every payment app. For example, most “anonymous” apps only use pseudonyms so the merchant can’t see your details, but the company itself still collects your data.
If you want complete and total privacy, cash or gift cards are your best options — they don’t require any personal information at all. Some businesses also accept cash-by-mail, which lets you pay for online goods anonymously without needing a return address.
If you’re looking to hide only your identity from sellers, you have more options, like PayPal and virtual payment cards. These methods shield your real name and credit card details from the seller, but the platform still collects some data — I’ll get into more detail below.
I created this list to help you find a solution that fits the level of anonymity you need. These options are in no set order since each category offers its own spin on privacy. My final caveat is that not every method is available in every region or can be used for every purchase.
Pro Tip: I always recommend using a reputable VPN to protect your online transactions. A good VPN like ExpressVPN makes all of your payment activities unreadable, so hackers can’t intercept sensitive information (like credit card details) during transactions. VPNs also hide your IP address, which prevents others from tracking your activity and provides access to geo-restricted payment methods from anywhere.
Editors' Note: ExpressVPN and this site are in the same ownership group.
6 Best Anonymous Payment Methods
There are a lot of options out there, and they can be divided into 2 categories: partially and fully anonymous.
A partially anonymous solution only stops the merchant from seeing your name or credit card details. If you buy something from a company, that company won’t know who you are. This is safe enough, but the bank, app, or financial institution that you’re using will still keep logs of your purchases and they’ll have records like your name, card numbers, and address. Basically, if a method requires you to have a bank or it only protects you from the seller, it’s partially anonymous.
A fully anonymous payment method means that you never need to give anyone your personal information at any step during the process. Unfortunately, there aren’t many fully anonymous methods (that are usable outside of niche places on the dark web). There are a few good options, but they usually come with limitations like extra fees and transaction limits.
After lots of testing and research, here are the best anonymous payment methods (in no particular order):
E-Wallets
An E-wallet (or digital wallet) is the most convenient way to shop online with partial anonymity. Most e-wallets, like PayPal, Cash App, and Venmo, allow you to create a pseudonym (a fake name or nickname) that will appear in place of your real name when you make a purchase.
This means the seller or person receiving the payment won’t see your actual name. However, the e-wallet company still knows your identity, as they collect your data behind the scenes for security and regulatory purposes.
For every E-Wallet on this list, you’ll need to link a bank or a valid debit/credit card in order to make payments. Fortunately, to increase your privacy, you can use a virtual card instead of your actual card.
The availability of each digital wallet varies by region, meaning you’re stuck with the ones available in your location (hint: VPNs can change your location, but you’ll have to make sure this isn’t breaking any rules or laws).
Here are a few of the best e-wallet options.
PayPal
PayPal won’t share your name or card details with anyone when you make a purchase, making it great for sending money or buying things online. However, your PayPal username and profile picture are visible to the person or business you’re paying. So if you’re trying to stay anonymous, you should avoid using a username or profile picture that can easily reveal your identity. Basically, if your name is Jack, your PayPal username shouldn’t be “I’mJack.”
PayPal is widely used by online merchants and even real-life stores, allowing you to make private purchases from almost anywhere.
Despite its accessibility and partial anonymity, PayPal isn’t the perfect option for everyone. You need to give PayPal a lot of personal information when you create your account, including your email, phone number, and even a government ID. You’ll also need to verify your card.
If you prefer not to share your actual card details with PayPal, you can register with a throwaway email and fund your PayPal account with a virtual credit card, which makes payments harder to trace back to you.
Note that PayPal has been the victim of a couple of data breaches in the past. If you need something totally private, I’d recommend gift cards or prepaid debit cards instead.
Cash App
Cash App is a good option since it’s just as anonymous as PayPal, but it’s only available in the US. When creating an account, you can use an alias called a $Cashtag to protect your identity. Whenever you buy something or send someone money, they can only see this alias (not your email or banking details). Cash App also has a debit card that you can use anywhere Visa is accepted, making it just as versatile as a regular debit card.
But, like PayPal, Cash App requires a lot of personal information when creating an account, including an email address, phone number, and full name. You can mask your identity with an alternative email address, phone number, and full name, but you’ll be limited to sending $250 a day. To use the full service, Cash App requires an ID to verify your identity.
Just be warned that Cash App faced a data breach in 2021, so there are some potential privacy concerns.
Venmo
Venmo is best for anonymous money transfers between friends, family, or businesses. It only displays your username during the transaction, and though you’ll need to verify a card you can use a virtual card when signing up.
However, like PayPal and Cash App, Venmo asks for your name, ID, phone number, and more. If you’re thinking about using alternative details, note that providing fake information will result in your account being suspended or transactions failing to go through. Unlike either of the previous 2 options though, Venmo hasn’t been the victim of a large data breach.
Venmo lets you create pseudonyms that others see when you trade with them, protecting your identity. It’s also built into many banking apps, like Bank of America and Chase, so you might be able to use it without any additional downloads. Also, Venmo has its own debit card that you can use in stores to stay semi-anonymous anywhere.
Google Wallet/Pay
Google Wallet offers some level of anonymity by using virtual card numbers when you make a purchase. This means the merchant doesn’t receive your actual credit or debit card details — they only see a virtual card number generated by Google Wallet. You can even generate different virtual card numbers for various merchants.
You can also use Google Pay, but it works differently. Google Pay generates a virtual account number for your card and uses transaction tokens for each purchase. Unlike Google Wallet, Google Pay uses a single virtual account number.
But neither option is fully anonymous because Google shares details linked to your Google account, such as your email or billing information. Since these details are tied to your identity, they can be traced back to you.
Google Wallet can be used in any store with a Near-Field Communication (NFC) device and on the vast majority of websites, and you can use Google Pay in stores, too.
Apple Pay
As usual, Apple’s solution is a lot more secure than most of its competitors. It uses device-specific numbers and a unique transaction code that masks your real information during purchases. The merchant never gets to see your credit card info or your name, and any would-be hackers wouldn’t be able to use your transaction code to make remote purchases.
The only drawback here is that you need to give Apple a ton of personal information when you make an Apple account. It’s the most private E-wallet, but it’s still not fully anonymous.
Prepaid Gift Cards
The easiest way to stay completely anonymous while shopping is to use a gift card. Prepaid gift cards are fully anonymous and can be bought at a store and used online. The best part is that you can buy these with cash and use them without needing to give someone your name or credit card info.
That said, there are a few limitations and drawbacks to using gift cards. You’ll have to buy gift cards specifically for the platform you want to purchase from, making it less flexible than your normal credit card. There’s also normally a limit on how much money you can load onto one gift card at a time, and many stores will limit how many you can buy at once.
Most gift cards also have a fee, usually a $3–5 activation fee when you first buy one. If you plan on using them over an extended period of time, be aware that you’re losing money each time you buy a new one.
Prepaid Debit Cards
Prepaid debit cards are an easy-to-use and fully anonymous option. These cards aren’t issued in your name, and you can load them with cash at retail locations without providing any personal information. Even if a hacker were to steal your prepaid card data, the potential loss is limited to the card’s balance.
They might not be great for long-term purchases though, since there are typically fees involved with loading or using a prepaid debit card. Also, some vendors may require registration or personal details for online reloading or higher balances. To prevent fraud, most companies also put a spending limit on prepaid cards.
Virtual Cards
A virtual card generates a unique, temporary card number for online payments so you don’t have to use your actual credit or debit card. Typically, you load funds into your virtual card account, and then create a disposable card that draws from this balance.
Since the card isn’t linked to your real bank or credit card account, the seller never sees your actual payment details. This also protects you from data breaches — if the seller’s system gets hacked, the stolen information is just a temporary virtual card number, not your real financial information.
My favorite virtual card service (and password manager), 1Password, lets you create a virtual pay card and then store it for future use. Your new card becomes locked to that merchant, meaning you can’t use it on other websites. The benefit to this is that if a hacker breached a company with your virtual card info, they couldn’t use that card elsewhere.
This isn’t usually a fully anonymous payment method, however. Most virtual cards require you to have a bank so they can link your debit card with the disposable one.
VPNs
VPNs add an additional level of protection to your online transactions. A VPN encrypts all of your traffic, meaning your Internet Service Provider (ISP) or anyone trying to snoop on your online transaction from the outside, like a hacker, won’t be able to see anything, including the website where you’re making the purchase or any details about your payment.
VPNs also mask your location by hiding your IP address — they assign you an IP address from the VPN server you’re connected to, which makes it look like you’re browsing the web from that location instead. This also means that a VPN provides access to any e-wallet or payment method from anywhere.
With top VPNs, you have a lot of options to choose from. For example, ExpressVPN has servers in 105 countries.
However, note that a VPN won’t hide any details from the merchant or your bank. This is why I recommend using it alongside one of the anonymous payment methods I discussed above.
Cash or Cash-By-Mail
At the end of the day, the most anonymous form of payment is cold hard cash. If you pay in cash you never have to give someone your real name, credit card details, or email address. Theoretically, you could even go “off the grid” and use cash for everything to stay completely invisible.
But this isn’t always an ideal solution. It’s pretty hard to use physical money to pay for things online. The easiest solution here is to buy gift cards with your cash and use those online, but if you can’t get gift cards for any reason, you can still try one other thing.
Some companies and services actually still allow cash-by-mail. If you find one, you can mail an envelope without a return address to prevent anyone from knowing where the money came from. It’s not the fastest solution and it’s prone to all of the problems normal mail faces (package theft, getting lost/delayed, etc.), but it works.
Bonus. Third-Party Payment Services
Third-party services like Paysafecard let you pay anonymously online using cash. All you need to do is buy a Paysafecard in person and then load up your account. These services usually include incentives for reloading, like codes for online games or small prizes. They’re similar to prepaid debit cards but usually have some secondary purpose.
However, you can’t rely on this for everything. Continuing to use Paysafecard as my example, not every online store accepts it (though to be fair, most do). It also puts a cap on how much you can spend per day, making it unusable for larger purchases.
There’s also always a reason to be skeptical of third-party payment services, since they don’t afford you the same protections as a bank. Should the company go bankrupt the day after you deposit all of your money into it, you might be left empty-handed without any recourse. They also don’t have the same stringent oversight as a bank, so there’s more room for something to go wrong.
Are Cryptocurrencies Anonymous?
Contrary to popular belief, cryptocurrency is not very anonymous. It’s actually less anonymous than gift cards, cash payments, E-wallets, and in my opinion, even regular credit cards. Here’s why.
Many cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, record all transactions on a public ledger called a blockchain. While these transactions don’t include your real name or personal information, they do use a unique identifier called a pseudonym, which is essentially your wallet address.
Even though your identity isn’t directly listed, it’s still possible for someone to trace that pseudonym back to you. For example, if you use Bitcoin to buy a pair of jeans online, the transaction is logged on the blockchain, showing the wallet address that made the purchase.
If someone wanted to, they could investigate that wallet address. They might look for information such as:
- Transaction History: They can see all transactions associated with that wallet, which may include other purchases or exchanges.
- Linking Data: If you ever used that wallet address on a platform that requires your identity (like an exchange where you bought the Bitcoin), they could connect your wallet to your real identity.
- Publicly Available Information: If the store you bought from collects customer information, they might have your details linked to that transaction.
It’s also much easier for the average hacker to steal someone’s crypto wallet than to hack into a company without being caught. A hacker can access your wallet simply by knowing your wallet address, which is publicly available on the blockchain. This address is like an account number, and while it doesn’t contain personal information, it’s the key to your funds.
If the hacker can obtain your private key — which is a secret code that allows access to your wallet — they can easily transfer your cryptocurrencies to their own wallet. This private key can be compromised through various methods, such as phishing attacks, malware, or insecure storage.
On top of all of that, crypto exchanges require a ton of personal information to sign up for. Take Coinbase or Binance for example. You need to give them your email address, full name, phone number, and even government ID. There will also be records if you attempt to trade your crypto for your national currency.
So if you buy a pair of jeans with crypto, a permanent public record exists, shielding you with nothing more than a crackable pseudonym. Once it’s cracked, it only takes a tiny bit of know-how to steal your wallet. For comparison, if you buy the same pair of jeans with your credit card, only the company or a potential hacker could see the transaction records.
I explained the distinction between anonymous and fully anonymous earlier — at my most generous, cryptocurrency ranks as “somewhat anonymous.”
That said, there are a few coins that have a truly anonymous system, such as Monero. The only problem with coins like Monero is that they’re banned in many countries, including China, Japan, South Korea, Iran, and Egypt. Many other countries are currently tightening their crypto regulations, so they could be banned at any moment. Monero is also accepted by fewer services than anything else on my list, making it impossible to use on most websites.
More Ways to Protect Yourself During Online Purchases
Making a payment anonymous is a good first step, but there’s a lot more to consider. If you stop there, you’re still vulnerable to phishing scams, malware, hackers, websites that collect cookies, fraudulent websites, and more. Follow these tips to stay completely protected while you shop.
- Keep your operating system and software up to date. When a software developer publishes a new patch, this almost always comes with vital security fixes. Without the latest security patches, your computer, browser, phone, or any apps you use are exposed to threats that have already been fixed. Make sure you regularly update everything you use and avoid falling victim to yesterday’s scams.
- Watch out for fraudulent websites. Hackers will deliberately mask fake websites as real ones, copying layouts, logos, and more. The goal is to deceive you into giving up your username, password, and credit card details. Whenever you’re visiting a website, make sure the URL matches the official website’s URL, and exercise extreme caution when opening links from unknown senders.
- Use an identity masking service. An identity masking service gives you a complete fake identity to use online. You can use Surfshark Alternative ID to get a fake email address, name, and phone number to hide your identity from the merchant. You may be able to use this to create a more anonymous account on e-wallets like PayPal, but note this may be against the site’s Terms of Use.
- Install a secure browser. Secure browsers like Bitdefender SafePay are designed to protect you during online transactions. Whenever you open a banking service or shopping website, Bitdefender opens a protected browser that encrypts your data and safeguards you from online malware.
- Use web protection tools. Web protection extensions protect you by warning you if you’re visiting a fraudulent site, preventing you from becoming the victim of a phishing scam. Norton and Bitdefender’s web protection tools both caught more phishing sites than Chrome’s built-in security, which significantly reduces your chances of making an unprotected transaction.
- Download an antivirus. One way that hackers steal your financial information is through the use of viruses and other malware. If they can infect your computer, they can spy on you, remotely collect information, or outright steal administrative access from you and take your credit card details by force. Norton and other top antiviruses detect malware before it can infect your system. Though an antivirus may seem unrelated to staying private, they’re the best way to avoid most online threats.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does it mean for a payment method to be anonymous?
An anonymous payment method usually means that your personally identifiable information isn’t visible to anyone involved in the transaction — specifically the merchant or recipient. This means that when you make a purchase, the seller cannot see details like your name, address, or payment card number. However, this doesn’t mean the payment provider or company processing the transaction can’t see your transaction history. They can still see your activity for purposes like fraud prevention, compliance, and record-keeping.
Being truly anonymous means that not even the payment provider can see who made the transaction. But truly private payment methods that work online are pretty rare. Outside of cash or cash-by-mail transactions, your best option would be a private crypto coin (but these come with their own unique problems).
Are anonymous payments completely safe?
No, but they’re a good start. Even if you have a 100% private payment method, you can still fall victim to phishing scams, fraud, or have your account hacked or stolen. That said, as long as you do a bit of research into what method will work best for you, you shouldn’t have major problems.
Why would a VPN make payments more anonymous?
Essentially, a VPN reduces your digital footprint by masking your IP address and encrypting your data. This prevents anyone, including your ISP, from spying on your online transactions, which also stops hackers from intercepting and stealing any of your payment data by snooping on your online activities.
This doesn’t make the transactions fully anonymous, however. The merchant, the recipient, and the payment processor could still see who’s making the purchase (unless you’re using any of the fully anonymous payment methods I discuss in this article).
What makes regular debit/credit card use unsafe?
When you buy something using a traditional debit or credit card, the merchant usually sees some of your personal information. This includes your full name, card number, and billing address. If that business were to get hacked, all of that information would be exposed and could be used by hackers to commit fraud in your name.
In-person transactions are also traced. The record that a store uses is collected and can be accessed by banks, the company themselves, or the government. A clever hacker could use stolen data or records to commit fraud on multiple fronts.
Fortunately, you can use virtual pay cards to mask existing credit cards you use online without needing to install a new app or apply for a new service.