Their original post says this:

Can I buy an account on a device that has no Play Services?

Not yet. We have plans to add more payment methods, but currently only offer Play Store in-app payments, which requires Play Services.

I do not think this is suspicious. They are starting where most of their users are, and whether we like it or not, is play services.

Their implementation with play services seems to be correct if it were done for privacy, though we can't ignore the fact it's still supporting Google.

The fact that they won’t even accept their “super private” shitcoin is a huge red flag here to be completely honest.

Nobody uses this. Signal also never processes a card. You have to transfer money from another crypto. That is not user friendly, and people would be pissed about this implementation too.

None of the other private app competitors have ever needed a phone number or payment and a lot of them let you self host too something signal is vehemently against.

The open source decentralized projects? Those a great, and important, but they are different. Signal is balancing security with convenience. Most average people would give up the moment it asked for an instance. Signal is easy to use, even for the tech illiterate. It works just like their other messaging apps, but only because it's centralized.

Its like using the Tor browser or something but you have to do a “zero knowledge proof” payment through google pay to access it. Would that make you feel comfortable? No? Then why are we acting like its ok for signal?

It's about where the users are. Most tor users are going to be on a desktop device, probably Linux, maybe Windows, then everything else. A very small percentage are going to be on Android. It would be very weird to be on a Linux device in a Tor browser being sent to Google services for payment. Signal is a mobile messaging app, which means basically two ecosystems. I assume they started with play services because of number of users and/or the fact Google already had ZKP payment as an option.

And ZKP isn't new, and it is real, and it's exactly how more things should be implemented.

Look at how many scammers use WhatsApp, and how much spam there is. Signal is clearly trying to make it tje best user experience they can without compromising security. This is just one step further, and it's only the first payment method, not the last.

I have never trusted them, I always considered many of Signal's decisions highly questionable, and I think they are either pressured into them by the US government, cooperating in what they think are limited and carefully-implemented ways while claiming and perhaps even believing they are fighting the good fight, or maybe they are just a psyop honeypot to begin with. I cannot trust them, and if they truly wanted me to, they would not do so many things that require me to trust them.