In part’s 1 and 2 I went through the beginning of the process of acquiring a US-based credit card (if you haven’t read them, this post probably won’t mean much so they are a better place to start) and left you, dear reader, waiting with baited breath (Yeah yeah I know, you’d almost forgotten really) for the outcome. Well, the card arrived somewhere around the 20th of last month, so it good time compared to estimates.

That’s when the real fun started. Well, fun being a fairly loose term here…

Once activated, the card made the funds I’d already credited available. However, when I went to load it to Hulu (the whole reason I started down that path) it wouldn’t work. Eeek!!

I tried it out on US iTunes also, with no luck. Slightly off topic however, I found the option (which I’d probably just missed perviously) to continue with the iTunes account without a funds source loaded. With that job done, I’ve successfully been downloading free apps from the US store to my AppleTV (Gen4) and iPhone/iPad. There is a little overhead switching between NZ and US stores but thus far it’s meeting a need.

But back to Hulu. Plan B (or maybe that was Plan F+) turned into setting up a US PayPal account. This fortunately worked, and my new card is setup as a funding source to it. I then used the PayPal account as the funding source for Hulu. A very round about way, and not yet confirmed to be functional long-term however next billing date, in theory, Hulu will bill my PayPal account which will in turn use my card to fund it. We’ll of course see how well that works.

So the question as to why it didn’t work. Here, 3 things are worth noting:

1. Details on iTunes suggests that it’s failing there as Apple can actually compare some part of the billing address loaded against the card to details you give. So even if you tell it all the right details, and it’s a US issued card, it can still pick stuff isn’t matching.
2. Hulu doesn’t ask for anything more address wise than an area code. But, I found amongst some forum a note that Payoneer cards are issued from somewhere in Central America. So perhaps it’s looking more specifically for North America issuance. Anyway, as yet I haven’t been able to confirm.
3. I tried a couple of other sites that require US cards and that hadn’t worked with either my NZ Visa Debit or the Entropay card, and they worked. So there are numerous factors at work. As yet I can’t even begin to speculate all the variables and which is impacting where.

What’s next you may ask? Well, in due course I might setup another card and get it sent to a US address that will forward it on as mail, meaning there is a US address loaded against the card. Other than that, I’ll probably test a few more services over time; I’ve specifically been asked about some geo-restricted Amazon media services.

Other than that it’s been both a success and to a smaller extent a failure of an experiment. Well, some things I’d wanted to work didn’t work the way I wanted; you could argue that as a failure, or perhaps since it was all an experiment you could say it was a success that you got a result from said test.

And on that note I shall leave you to ponder experiments for yourself. Feel free to ask questions, I’ll answer any I can! =P