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Yeah sign me up for being annoying at this. Several times I'm just like: "why the hell can't I just pay for this thing up front and know what I'm spending." Then there's also both Google Cloud, AWS, etc not letting you spin up certain machines because of "quota limits" which you have to apply to raise. It's like: WTF? do they want your money or not? Idk why it's designed like this but it's a horrible experience.

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It's designed to limit the damage when people put their AWS admin credentials on GitHub or in their Android app and someone uses it to mine Bitcoin :)

There is significant regulation for prepay of things in many jurisdictions. Eg gift cards, and it is likely that the cloud businesses do not want to enter that mine field.

Yes some of them have gift card programs already, but they probably don't want expanded regulations to contend with large sums of money.

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