Is there a White-list of Trusted Online Vendors?
"I'm going to go with ""ridiculous notion.""  :) The vast majority of businesses are legitimate, run by honest people trying to earn a living for themselves and their employees.  These days, almost all of them accept credit cards.  Crooked businesses are a very small minority. When a bad business over charges you, you dispute the charge, and you get your money back.  But that's not all that happens.  The bad merchant pays penalties for this, and if it happens more than a couple of times, the merchant loses their merchant account with their bank, which means that they lose their ability to accept credit card payments anymore.  A crooked business is not able to rob people via credit card for very long at all. A whitelist would certainly not be able to include every legitimate business.  And a blacklist would never be able to be kept up-to-date, as bad businesses come and go continuously; as soon as a business was added to the blacklist, they would lose their merchant account and would no longer need to be on the list. What you are describing is very rare.  My brother once had a bad experience with a tech support company where they were repeatedly charging him for a service they never performed.  But a credit card chargeback took care of it.  If that company made a habit of that, I'm sure that they got in trouble with their bank. Instead, the most common credit card fraud happens when crooks use your credit card at perfectly legitimate businesses.  But your whitelist/blacklist wouldn't help you with that at all."
All the items listed are required for International Wire transfer. In wrong hands this info along with other info can cause issues. Most of the times you trust the person with this info and hence is less cause to worry. So the key is if you don't trust, don't give the details. Use alternatives like; Best open an account for receiving funds. Share the details, once the funds are received move it to an account where the details have not been shared. Alternatively paypal or other such services can help. The answer is mathematics. Let's say you have $100 capital to invest with.. With a mortgage: With a unit trust (assuming you don't put in borrowed money): 5% growth on the property is $25, but a $25 profit on a unit trust requires 25% growth. Well, that's assuming zero interest and zero fees. Let's say interest is 3% but so are trust fees. A property now requires 8% growth for $25 profit in a year, where a unit trust now requires 29% growth for $25 profit. Which one is more likely? The above calculations don't take in to consideration all associated costs and is obviously exaggerated but it shows the answer is not black and white but is instead just mathematics on a bunch of variables. Debt isn't a bad thing so don't be afraid of using debt. With debt you can borrow more to invest. Having a fully paid off house is not a good investment if some of that equity could be earning you more else where (if the math makes sense). "Horseshit, for one it isn't the CEO that has to be a minority in these preference contracts it's the shareholders so we know you're full of shit.  Second, no company is *banned* under any of these schemes because of the race of even shareholders. Even the suggestion is fucking ridiculous because that would clearly violate the 14th amendment.   The federal gov and state governments have TONS of vendors for which a small percentage they've decided they want to make a conscious effort of hiring minority and women owned contractors. THIS DOES NOT MEAN THEY WILL NOT ACCEPT WHITE CONTRACTORS. It means that after bids are submitted they might still consider a minority or women owned bid that doesn't come in at the lowest price. In any case it's usually a small sliver of total contracts. If you're wondering why they do this for minorities and women, they do it for a bunch of different categories including veterans and small businesses. It's a feel good story.  Your company did not lose a contract because your CEO is white, that is just a fucking lie. Your company might have lost a bid to a woman or minority owned contractor. To which, I say ""tough."" You might have lost the contract anyway to another bidder. Maybe your work wasn't as good as you say. We have no way to know without knowing your bid and their bid and if they are in fact minority owned.  So as of now you're just some guy bitching about losing his job on the internet. Go somewhere with that bullshit." These days more and more people have the feeling that they may have high blood sugar level. But this may or may not be true. If you are looking for some quick cash and if you have diabetes test strips that are unexpired then there are a few vendors online who would buy the same. A South Korean buyer wanted to import huge quantity of Crude Oil from a supplier in Saudi Arabia where the supplier asked for a Bank Guarantee. The buyer's company instantly contacted us and we facilitated their Crude Oil deal by providing BG MT760 after they successfully obliged to BWT’s Terms. "I tried to get a friend to buy something at Monoprice - it was even cheaper there than Amazon.  However Monoprice insist you create yet another account with yet another password before they will let you make a purchase.  Needless to say he said ""screw that"" and made the purchase at Amazon.  It is amazing just how bad many of the alternatives are to Amazon, especially when the competition is Amazon where the user already has an account.  An article - [The $300m button](http://www.uie.com/articles/three_hund_million_button/) - is excellent highlighting the same issue.  Jakob Nielsen also has a [good report on current ecommerce sites](http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ecommerce.html) - note how great the failure rate is.  Back to Monoprice, I did contact them to explain that they were losing sales, explained why, pointed to the $300m button article etc.  They then explained back to me that I needed to create an account on their site before making a purchase.  Duh." There are companies who sell data gleaned in aggregate from credit card providers to show how much of what category of product is sold online or offline, but that data is not cheap.  1010data is one such data aggregator we are talking to right now. Haven’t seen pricing yet but I expect 6 figures to access the data I've definitely seen a similar conversation about this, I personally don't buy from eBay (Amazon for me). So I turned to the internet to see what I could find to offer you any additional information (albeit not my personal experience).  I first read this article: CodeNerdz Article and was pretty horrified by the scamming that can happen by buyers. Then, this article by another regular user of eBay, Selling on eBay without PayPal : eBay Guides confirmed the trouble people have with PayPal & eBay. Payment Services permitted on eBay: Allpay.net, Canadian Tire Money, cash2india, CertaPay, Checkfree.com, hyperwallet.com, Moneybookers.com, Nochex.com, Ozpay.biz, Paymate.com.au, Propay.com, XOOM Have you looked into any or all of these?