Cash Is Great For Your Privacy
Cash is King when it comes to privacy 👑
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As our world is progressively trying to become ever more digital, the usage of cash is decreasing. Countries are following the trend of becoming cashless, some faster than others. While many are now preferring to use either cards or phones to make their transactions, many are overseeing (or not even considering) one of the best advantages that cash has over other payment methods: privacy.
Though it is not flawless, cash will give you the best privacy protection when doing transactions. Here are a few reasons why:
All cash transactions are exclusively between the customer and the merchant. There is no middleman of banks, phones, or anyone else with the ability to observe or judge your purchase history.
Using credit or debit cards with merchants means collecting your personal information, and it could be shared with others.
Cash payments aren’t victims of data breaches since you are not collecting personal information and storing it in a database (that is, if you don’t use memberships or loyalty programs).
While cash is great, you cannot use it for all your transactions, especially when it comes to online shopping (unless they are from privacy-focused companies such as Mullvad or Proton). That’s where you have to use debit or credit cards to purchase goods and services. However, exposing your card details puts you at risk of data breaches.
To protect your financial information, you should use virtual cards. Virtual cards provide you some privacy protection by hiding your true card details from merchants. They do not hide your transactions from banks, so keep that in mind. Some popular virtual card providers include:
Privacy.com - Free & paid options, available in the U.S. only.
MySudo (anonyome.com) - Paid options only, available in the U.S only.
Revolut (revolut.com) - Paid options only, available internationally.
Make sure you do your research and see which virtual providers works best for you.
What’s your take on cash? Let me know in the comments.
Until Next Time,
Monique 💵
Additional links for further reading:
Why Don’t We Have More Privacy When We Use A Credit Card?
Privacy Guides: Private Payments
NBTV: The TRUTH about Bank Privacy
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