I have no problems with my visa card which is issued by a Chinese bank and a US freight forwarder address(apparently not my actual address) for billing. Since I set my credit line to 0, I dont bother with risk of frauds.

Yeah, faking the billing address sometimes works, sometimes it doesn't work, depending on the issuing bank and all kinds of other factors. Believe me, as I am often in the US, I try this all the time.

Some systems don't check anything, most systems only check the numeric characters written in the address, but some systems also check the country and/or zip code.

I can't use my Austrian CC to buy from your Apple link, but I could use it at Lowe's with some US address (I used my Austrian address street but with country US).

Btw, I could not order a Macbook Pro from apple.com (online), even when I was in the US, and the online system allowed entering an Austrian billing address. The payment went through, but the order was cancelled a few days later with no explanation (and no money back either!). I had to plead with Apple support that I am not, in fact, some kind of scammer, and they made me come in person to an Apple store and only after I presented them with two separate types of government ID they returned me the money (and allowed me to place a new order there, in person).

Life sucks if you are not a US person.

Thanks for sharing your anecdotes, it seems Apple's online store is a lot trickier to deal with that I originally thought. Given the fact that there are almost none posts about having troubles with ordering US gift cards in the Chinese social media, I wonder if they are offering Chinese people some special care(like lowering credit card validation standards? We don't apply for a CC to make domestic payments). Life is strange, without ever been to the US, I have the account you've always wanted for years.