Is this for only U.S. customers?
Yes, unfortunately for the time being :(.
Could you please tell this on your homepage and maybe even add a "send me one email when this is available in my country" form?
Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card
21–30 of 367 posts
Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card
#22Hey HN - Privacy.com co-founder here. I'm really excited to share what we've been working on for the past year and a half or so. We've been neck-deep in payments stuff on the card issuing side (getting a BIN sponsor, ACH origination, etc), so happy to answer any questions on that front as well. P.S. For new users, your first $5 donation to watsi.org is on us :)
Is the browser extension something you plan on requiring?
Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card
#23Hey HN - Privacy.com co-founder here. I'm really excited to share what we've been working on for the past year and a half or so. We've been neck-deep in payments stuff on the card issuing side (getting a BIN sponsor, ACH origination, etc), so happy to answer any questions on that front as well. P.S. For new users, your first $5 donation to watsi.org is on us :)
Many virtual cards before you have ran into issues of being flagged as prepaid or single use cards and having their BINs blacklisted by merchants. How will you be combatting this?
There's a lengthier answer to this, but long story short, yes we're aware of a lot of the common pitfalls. A big part of the challenge comes down to limiting abuse on the cards (which we're planning to do).
Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card
#24My biggest question with Privacy, and of any one-time use credit card numbers service, is always:
Will it affect my rewards? Will businesses still show up unaffected with the same categories on my credit card statement? (I have a travel rewards only card, so breaking the rewards flow is a deal-breaker for using a higher level service.)
Edit: I misunderstood the service as being able to be layered on top of normal credit cards. It looks like the funding source is only bank accounts for now. Still my question remains if building on credit or debit cards is on the roadmap.
Edit 2: They are one-time use numbers, right? "Use at merchants" (plural) seems to possibly imply otherwise.
> What happens when I generate a new Privacy card?
> We'll give you a random 16-digit Visa card number that you can use at merchants that accept Visa debit cards...
Edit 3: It sounds like the business model results in keeping the money that would go to rewards on a normal card.
> How do you make money?
> Every time you spend using a Privacy card, the merchant or website pays a fee (called interchange) to Visa and the issuing bank. This fee is shared with us. We have some premium features planned, but rest assured, our core virtual card product will always be free and we will never sell your personal data.
Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card
#25I understand why you need it, and I want this service in a big way, but I'm just baulking at giving you my online banking username and password. Why should I trust you with that?
We already trust mint.com with this information. I don't see the big issue.
Not everyone does. And anyway it's owned by Intuit which has a much longer track record than this new company, so it's not the same thing.
Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card
#26It's an interesting idea. However, I'm not comfortable with a third party having all that information. Some banks issue "corporate" cards, with numerous "employee" cards. I already trust the bank, after all. So what else does Privacy.com provide that's worth the risk? They're still subject to KYC, right? So there's no strong privacy. Or am I missing something?
Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card
#27I understand why you need it, and I want this service in a big way, but I'm just baulking at giving you my online banking username and password. Why should I trust you with that?
Totally understand it's sensitive, and it's cool if you're not ready to trust us with that yet. That's something that we plan to earn and don't take for granted. Eventually we do plan to allow debit card funding.
Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card
#28The stop subscriptions aspect really stood out to me, I had to spend 40 minutes on the phone with that darn company to get things canceled, even though I only used it for one day for an hour.
It's important to remember that just cancelling a payment method doesn't necessarily mean you're unsubscribed. If you're still getting a service, you're still on the hook for paying for it one way or another.
Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card
#29The stop subscriptions aspect really stood out to me, I had to spend 40 minutes on the phone with that darn company to get things canceled, even though I only used it for one day for an hour.
If you signed up online, the company must provide a way to cancel online per visa rules. Check their TOS, they probably list a way to cancel online via email or whatever.
Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card
#30Finally, a card for my dial up needs!
Really though, isn't something like the apple pay system a better way? You don't risk getting flagged as a prepaid card and reject, you aren't giving out your data.