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Comment by cedws

2 days ago

I don’t know if it defeats the purpose but you could require an upfront, refundable deposit.

Requiring money upfront would classify the platform as an e-money institution, which is highly problematic from the legal perspective.

  • How does tarsnap handle it? I think there's lots of services that bill up front... Isn't it only e-money if you can convert it back to cash?

    • If you store funds for a specific service that you provide, it's fine. If it's for many services or services provided by others, it's legally problematic.

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  • > Requiring money upfront would classify the platform as an e-money institution, which is highly problematic from the legal perspective.

    What if you just reserve it on the card?

    • Online card holds typically expire in ~7 days (often sooner, depending on the issuer), which is too short for our use case.