How I managed to order without a credit card

Let me explain my situation first.

I come from a small country in Europe called Slovenia. I wanted to order a Glowforge Pro to expand my business but came across a big problem. Even though I have the money I couldn’t send it to Glowforge.

I’ll tell you below how I found a way to get a card and completely activate it in Paypal within 45 minutes.

The problem was in the payment methods. They all required a credit card with enough credit to make the payment. And getting 5000 EUR credit on a card is no easy feat.
Debit cards just didn’t work, because Glowforge required it be payed in full, and Debit cards have a daily limit lower then the total of a Glowforge laser cutter.

After talking to Glowforge and not finding a solution I turned to my bank. As always they didn’t wanna hear anything about it. Either I apply for a larger credit, wait for approval over a couple month period, or forget it. They were at no help at all. Some of them just said straight “Not possible” when I asked how I would get a 5000 EUR credit on a card.

So now what. I thought there’s just no way, and I should forget it and go cry in a corner.

I went from the bank for a coffee with my girlfriend. We were talking about how stupid it is that you have the money to buy something but no way to send it. We sat there for a while and I just decided to call a friend of mine that had been importing to Slovenia a couple of years ago for his company.

I give him a ring and tell him my problem. He said no problem just go to a Gas station and get a Smart Pay Card. At that point I’m just laughing at him, like he’s joking. He just said go home and google it.

I then came across this: http://www.smartpaycard.net/en/default.wlgt

If you’re from any other country go here: https://www.mastercard.com/mel/personal/en/aboutourcards/prepaid/faqs.html#q01

or google for prepaid cards, you get them from American Express and Visa as well. I recommend searching for it in your own language.

What I had to do was basically just go to a gas station and ask for one. I payed 15 EUR I think and they handed it to me. What I got was a card I could put money on and has no limit to how much I want to pay with it.

Of course it’s not as simple as that, If I would leave it as it is I could load a maximum of 500 EUR and have a maximum yearly traffic of, I think, 2.500 EUR, It’s mostly used for anonymous purchases on the web. To fix that I had to give them my name and address, activate it with my phone, send some information about myself and call their service center. But it took me 30 minutes and I was done.I can now just load money to my card and whenever I need it use it for whatever I want.

But there are still limitations at first.

The first load can not exceed 500 EUR. And after that 1000 EUR. You have to provide some more detailed information and send copies of your documents and then they lift it to a larger number. For me in Slovenia it’s going to be about 2500 EUR per day.

The whole process was pretty simple, they just guided me over the phone and I was done in about 45 minutes.
I even had it activated and verified on Paypal within that time.
But since it’s Friday evening right now, my limits are gonna be raised next week.

Now it’s going to take me about 2 days to deposit all the money on the card and after that I can pay for it over Paypal.

If you found yourself in the same problem as me and this will help you to order your Glowforge use my referral link to get a 100$ for yourself and me included -> http://glowforge.com/referred/?kid=0fEqdh

Good luck!

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I told them about my issue and they lifted the limit for me to 6.000,00 EUR deposit per day and 15.000,00 EUR payment limit per day :open_mouth:

Gonna have to wait till Tuesday though, since can’t do a transfer on weekends and takes 1 day for it to show up.

And the security of this card is just great. I unlock the card for 15 minutes (or whatever I set it to) make the payment and it locks itself again.

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