Why We Now Collect Billing Addresses for Card Payments

We're making a change to our credit card payment process: we now collect billing addresses during checkout. For a service focused on privacy and anonymity, we know this needs explanation.

What's Changing?

Starting today, when you add credits to your account using a credit or debit card via Stripe, you'll be asked to provide your billing address during checkout. This includes:

  • Full name (as it appears on your card)
  • Street address
  • City and postal code
  • Country
  • Phone number (optional)

Why This Change?

If you're privacy-conscious, asking for more information probably seems counterintuitive. Here's the honest reasoning behind this change.

1. Your Protection Against Fraud

When you use a credit card online, there's always a risk that someone could attempt to use stolen card details. By collecting and verifying billing addresses, Stripe's fraud prevention systems can:

  • Cross-check the address with your card issuer's records
  • Flag suspicious transactions before they're processed
  • Prevent unauthorized use of your payment method
  • Reduce the likelihood of your legitimate transactions being falsely declined

This means your cards are safer when used on our platform, and you're less likely to experience issues with legitimate payments being blocked.

2. Platform Stability and Reliability

As a privacy-focused service, we occasionally face challenges that other businesses don't. Unfortunately, bad actors sometimes target platforms like ours for testing stolen card credentials, knowing we ask for minimal information.

When fraudulent transactions occur on our platform:

  • Our payment processor can suspend or limit our account
  • Legitimate users experience payment processing delays
  • We may be forced to implement more restrictive policies
  • Service stability can be impacted

By implementing industry-standard verification, we're ensuring that Crypton.sh remains stable, accessible, and able to process payments reliably for our legitimate users, like you.

3. Protecting Your Investment

In rare cases where payment disputes occur (whether initiated by you or your bank), having complete billing information on file:

  • Makes it easier to verify you're the legitimate cardholder
  • Speeds up the resolution process
  • Helps us provide evidence to support your legitimate transactions
  • Ensures you're not caught up in lengthy investigation processes

This protects both your account and your access to our services.

What About Privacy?

This is likely your primary concern, and it's a valid one. Here's the technical reality:

What Crypton.sh Does NOT See or Store

Your billing address is collected and stored exclusively by Stripe, not on our servers. We do not:

  • ❌ Store your full address in our database
  • ❌ See your complete card details
  • ❌ Have access to your billing information for marketing
  • ❌ Share this information with third parties
  • ❌ Link your billing address to your usage of our services

What Remains Anonymous

All the privacy features you value remain completely unchanged:

  • ✅ Your message content stays end-to-end encrypted
  • ✅ Your account doesn't require a real email address
  • ✅ Your phone number usage remains anonymous
  • ✅ Your activity on our platform remains private
  • ✅ We still don't track, log, or monitor your communications

Your billing address is used solely for payment verification by Stripe, not for identifying your use of our service.

The Separation of Concerns

Think of it this way:

  • Payment processing (handled by Stripe): Knows you're a customer paying for a service, requires standard billing verification
  • Service usage (handled by Crypton.sh): Completely anonymous, encrypted, and private

These two systems operate independently. Your payment information doesn't cross over into your service usage data, and your service usage data doesn't cross over into your payment information.

Industry Context

Billing address collection has become standard practice for card payments, even among privacy-focused services. This isn't unique to Crypton.sh, most platforms that accept credit cards, including privacy-focused VPN providers and encrypted email services, require billing addresses for card transactions.

This is primarily driven by payment processors and banks requiring fraud prevention measures, not by the services themselves wanting more data.

Alternative Payment Methods

We completely understand if you prefer not to provide a billing address. We continue to offer multiple anonymous payment options:

Cryptocurrency Payments

  • Monero (XMR): Completely anonymous and private
  • Bitcoin (BTC): Pseudonymous blockchain payments
  • Multiple altcoins: Including ETH, LTC, DOGE, and more

These payment methods require no personal information whatsoever, just send crypto to the provided address and your account is credited automatically.

Bank Transfers

  • SEPA (European Union)
  • UK Faster Payments
  • US Wire Transfer

Bank transfers require only your account reference number, with no online form to fill out.

Vouchers

If you prefer complete anonymity, you will soon be able to purchase Crypton.sh vouchers from authorized resellers who accept cash or other anonymous payment methods.

The Bottom Line

This change separates payment security from service privacy:

  • Your communications remain anonymous and encrypted
  • Your service usage stays private
  • Your payment information is handled by Stripe separately
  • Your choice of anonymous payment methods remains available

The billing address requirement applies only to credit card payments. If you prefer complete anonymity for payments, cryptocurrency and other anonymous options are still fully supported.

Questions?

If you have concerns about this change, reach out to [email protected]. We're happy to discuss the technical details.