Why must I use ApplePay and an app to apply for a visa?

This weekend, I’m travelling to Sydney to interview Yoel Roth for my upcoming Revolution.social podcast. I’m excited to talk to him because, after leaving Twitter, he wrote a paper about the trust and safety challenges facing social media protocols. If we decentralise social media, how do we govern ourselves without relying on centralised systems that can define who has permission to participate?

I need an electronic travel authorization to go to Australia and mine had expired. How hard can it new to renew it? Much harder than it should be.

The thing is, a visa is the most intense kind of government permission. And the permissioned and centralised world of technology almost derailed my entire trip. When I was at the Oslo Freedom Forum, I lost my fiat debit card. It wasn’t a big deal; I blocked it in my bank’s app, and I have other cards, so it wasn’t a major issue. I ordered a replacement card, but my bank requires me to use it physically at a store before they’ll allow me to use the new card for digital payments. And it hasn’t arrived in the post yet. No big deal, I have alternatives, lots of ways of paying for things.

Last night, I remembered to double check my Australian visa. To my surprise, I found out that I needed to renew it. No problem; I went to their website and they directed me to use their mobile app. Fine, I’ll download it again. But here’s where things started to go wrong. Apparently, the Australian government has decided that the visa should only be paid for with an in-app purchase! And because I had frozen my debit card, I couldn’t use that card. My bank wouldn’t unfreeze it because I had ordered a replacement card.

There is a website method, but it lacks any instructions, there are hundreds of questions instead of half a dozen, and it wasn’t clear to me what of the hundreds of Visa options I was supposed to choose.

So I’m waiting for my flight in Auckland but can’t check in because my visa isn’t set up. I need the app and to make an in app purchase!!!

Apple wouldn’t let me re-download the visa app because it has in-app payments and I needed an active card. Now I’ve got like 6 cards in my phone’s digital wallet! But Apple will only let me use a debit card with a New Zealand address! There’s literally an Apple Card with plenty of limit on this phone, but I can’t use it. I tried to use my new NZ company account, but it’s new and I only put $10 to test that it worked right before my trip to OFF! It worked but Apple had more delayed payments than $10, so it quickly declined more payments. Apple still wouldn’t let me re-install the visa app! So I immediately transferred a few hundred dollars from in to the new company account. Normally inter-bank transfers in Australia and New Zealand are immediate because both countries have small banking systems where all banks actually use a single centralized database. Not great for privacy but it’s normally very efficient.

I did an intrabank transfer to my non-blocked company account. But instead of being immediate they said it might take “a few hours!” So I tried adding funds to the new company account using debit or credit cards not those all blocked. Probably money transmitter rules about using cards to fund a bank account vs purchasing. Why provide the option if it won’t go through. Dunno. My guess is the bank was happy to accept it but the credit card companies I use blocked it.

I thought, okay, let me find a pre-paid NZ card. Turns out that there are tons of ways I could be a card issuer of prepaid cards in NZ, but I couldn’t find one which I could get a virtual card online with an NZ address.

Cash App was happy to let me use my BTC to fund some prepaid cards, but they all ended up with European or American issuing banks! Despite being marketed as New Zealand prepaid cards, but they all ended up being either impossible for me to set up to find or not actually based in NZ. Turns out that this stumbling through options lead to me getting a few prepaid no-KYC bitcoin-funded debit cards by accident! All this financial regulation and I stumbled in to anonymous credit cards.

Another option would be just switch my AppStore back to the US. But, Apple won’t let you change your country for your AppleID if you have any active subscriptions. I’ve got a bunch of US cards in my Apple wallet, but I can’t use them.

I missed my flight and had to rebook on a later one, not cheap. But kept going, trying to find a way to install this app. I tried to use my work Apple ID that I use for the nos.social app. While Apple lets you use phone numbers as 2-factor auth, it’s really buggy and doesn’t work for setting up a user in macOS or iOS. They really want you to use the own AppleID everywhere. I could log in to the US Apple account but only via the iCloud website, oh, and Apple Developer Connect. Useless for me in this situation. It wouldn’t take my US AppleID on my laptop or phone.

I also kept trying to find a debit card that Apple NZ would accept, get my personal bank to unblock my card, or even the new business account to work. Nothing.

If I didn’t figure this out, I’d miss my now rescheduled flight.

Eventually, I went through and got the very complicated website to work and spent $200 on a tourist visa. This same visa costs $20 if I use the Apple / Android app and their payment rails! The visa came back confirmed in a couple minutes, after paying the 10x “web tax.”

Right after that, I went through and got confirmation that the bank transfer to my new business account cleared. Honestly, it’s the first time since moving to New Zealand I’ve had an interbank fiat transfer take time; it’s normally immediate! Just when I needed it.

Why is this tech so locked down? Apple won’t let me fund my Apple “iTunes” account with my own cards, but only allows local fiat payments. Australia makes it 10 times more expensive to use their website instead of Apple Pay and makes the process much harder!

Billions get laundered through off shore shell companies and Wall Street but somehow banks, credit cards companies, the government of Australia, and Apple all worked to make nearly impossible for me to pay for a $20 visa waiver!? And instead I had to spend $200 on a sketchy website that barely worked.

Now just to be clear. I’m opposed to the existence of borders and nation states being able to control who can live where base on a corrupt system of visas. So my minor frustration is nothing in comparison to what a person from Nigeria or Afghanistan faces when they try and travel. It’s still frustrating.

Wow. I was a bit prematurely judgey on John McAfee, until I heard his last interview on the Follow The Money Podcast with Karl Boyd. He is actually thoughtful and lucid, if bemused and dramatic. I cannot believe I am saying this, but I agree with him on several subjects.

She’s a beast.

I’ve got an old IDE hard drive I salvaged from a PC a few months ago — a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 8. It still works, but I don’t really have any use for it.

Probably I could send it to someone who needs this thing for some project.

that's what I did

I used my own account, should not use my own?

Sats flow > Cash flow

I am currently testing it and activated it but how to interact with LLM from the client or send messages through Signal to the bot?