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Comment by strnisa

2 days ago

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.

> 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.