Would you care to expand on your journey here, please?
As I said - complete novice to crypto - but am I just a youtube video & some form filling away from being able to push the button with a TD using this method...?
I notice you're UK too - I never found anything online for a prepaid visa for us (which would be perfect) that didn't again sound like loads of hassle/high fees etc! - same with WU (no way am I messing about emailing my passport etc to set an account up to purchase illegal goods from China!)
There's clearly a lot of traffic through here to TD's - but it appears to me that the likelihood of being scammed (by the CC processor, if not the TD themselves) is rather high when using CC... Am I to assume crypto is the default?
I used to use direct bank transfers, then when the Chinese stopped those, I moved to credit cards and have used those with one of the largest TDs for a couple of years. But they often get rejected and I have to run the transaction several times to get it through. I've never had any illegal transactions on to my cards. But the hassle of rejected transactions meant I thought I'd try BTC since my TD gives a discount for using it. It was easy to open the Coinbase account. But the cryptocurrency volatility is annoying and makes it tricky, when the TD sends you the amount they want, to get it right. I did intentionally send them a little bit more on my purchase than they asked for to avoid this and sent it as soon as I could having had their email request.
In fact, in this instance it worked to my advantage. I had planned to order a NOOB Daytona with the sum I put into Coinbase, but after I'd initiated the pounds transfer from my UK bank account into Coinbase, Noob as we all know became unavailable... So, though I'd moved the pounds into BTC, I placed no order. BTC then ended up rising 30% in a few days and I began to get worried about another crash.
So I ordered a cheaper watch as a fun experiment, paid with BTC and, worried about the peak BTC had hit, moved the rest of the BTC back to pounds, in the Coinbase account where it currently remains. The result was that the watch, which is now on its way to me, didn't cost me anything except nerves!
I think overall BTC is still essentially a speculation, it dropped 20% just after my order, so needs careful timing...