GOTHENBURG, Feb. 3 — Mullvad, the Swedish privacy-focused VPN provider widely cited as the most rigorous example of anonymous account signup in the consumer-VPN market, said Tuesday it will discontinue its long-running cash-by-mail payment option on March 31, citing falling volume and rising anti-money-laundering compliance costs.
The cash-by-mail option, introduced in 2014, allowed customers to mail an envelope containing physical currency in any of several supported denominations along with a hand-written account number to Mullvad’s Gothenburg headquarters. Upon receipt, the company would credit the corresponding number of months of service to that account number, without ever associating the account with a name, address, or email.
The company said in a blog post that the system, while emblematic of its privacy posture, accounted for less than 0.4 percent of total signups in 2025 and had become “increasingly difficult” to operate under European Union anti-money-laundering rules that require expanded reporting on cash receipts above relatively low thresholds.
“We did not take this decision lightly,” said a Mullvad spokesperson in a written response to questions from Consumer Tech Wire. “Cash-by-mail has been part of how Mullvad describes itself for a decade. But the volume is genuinely small, and the compliance burden has continued to rise. We would rather invest the staff time in protecting the anonymous account-number system, which is the more important piece.”
What is unchanged
The underlying account-number model — under which Mullvad accounts are identified solely by a 16-digit randomly generated number, with no associated email, name, or other personal identifier — remains in place. Customers will still be able to pay via Bitcoin, Monero, credit card, PayPal, bank transfer, and Swish, the Swedish mobile-payments system. The company said it had not seen any evidence in its annual transparency report process that the loss of cash-by-mail would degrade the practical anonymity of its customer base.
Mullvad’s pricing remains a flat 5 Euros per month, a single tier the company introduced in 2018 and has not adjusted since.
Industry reaction
Privacy researchers gave the move mixed reviews. Several said the cash-by-mail option had become more symbolic than practical, while others said its discontinuation represents a meaningful narrowing of the genuinely anonymous-payment surface area in the consumer-VPN market.
“Cash-by-mail was the last commercially operated anonymous-VPN payment method that did not require a cryptocurrency wallet of any kind,” said Dr. Bartholomew Achebe-Lindqvist, a researcher at the Hamburg-based Privacy Engineering Initiative. “Monero is a strong alternative for users who can use it. But there is a population of users for whom Monero is not accessible, and for that population, this is a real loss.”
Mullvad said customers with active cash-paid balances will continue to receive service through the natural expiration of those balances, with no mid-term cancellation. A spokesperson said the company has no plans to change its quarterly transparency reports or its annual independent security audit cycle.
Reginald Rosenberg-Vance is editor in chief of Consumer Tech Wire.