As an additional note: I would love to see such a privacy-respecting third party exist. Ideally, they would collect nothing at all and exist via prepaid value.

As an additional note: I would love to see such a privacy-respecting third party exist. Ideally, they would collect nothing at all and exist via prepaid value. Several years ago there was a company similar to this called UltimateGameCard - they were a neutral third party not associated with any publisher that strictly handled paid-in-store prepaid value PINs that collected no personal information and were partnered with dozens to hundreds of game publishers, and supported hundreds of different major games (and several software publishers). They were available in almost every store, and using them required no privacy violations. Explicitly, their largest customer base were minors (like me at the time), and not collecting PII or even name made it great and a first choice for them. The low incidence of fraud and inability to chargeback the company (cash only in hand; and you could still dispute the game publisher via the prepaid company to get value added back) resulted in extremely low fees, to the point where games would give you bonus value if you chose this instead of a credit card or other. They had contracts with basically every major publisher - Club Penguin, Runescape, Everquest, etc, and your funds were good almost every game you'd play. They generally respected both sides of the market: you, a 12 year old, could ask customer service if you were genuinely ripped off or accidentally claimed too much value at a specific publisher but didn't use it yet, and they would treat you like an adult. The game publisher could refund the value if you didn't spend it yet, and not be hit with any form of chargeback or dispute fee or any increase in fees at all. And since it was paid in cash, if you were lying about it or just upset you failed your loot box gamble, you got nothing back. It was also more or less publisher contract based so random IAP trash couldn't just sign up and take money - all the big names were on this. I would love a system like this again.