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Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card

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Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bank of America offers this as "ShopSafe", but it's buried on the BoA credit card account page and it's a flash app. It's also not available from the BoA mobile app, at least not last I looked.

I came here to say this. It's really a great service, but it is not available for the iPhone (Flash) so I always have to use it on my laptop (trade one problem for another) which is kind of a pain. But I do use it all the time and highly recommended especially to avoid having to cancel subscriptions. People are surprised when I point it at them because it is almost as if BoA does not want you to use it. Check the rig…

Ya I've been thinking about reverse-engineering it to write something like the privacy extension for a while... nice to see someone else put in the work!

Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card

#242

So, my bank in Turkey (Garanti) offered this more than a decade ago - you could make "virtual" cards to use on online transactions, and load them up with the specific amount of money. This way you didn't need to worry about card numbers being stolen because they were easy to cancel and also didn't have any money in them. Other cool stuff they did back then: online banking actually had features, and had a 2 factor key…

Banks in the US have it (like Bank of America). It's not as good a tech-execution -- no chrome extension w/auto-fill.

Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card

#243
post #89

Is that something that new? My bank (Itaú, in Brazil) offers this option for some time now. Here(in portuguese): https://www.itau.com.br/cartoes/cartao-virtual/ Or am I missing something? Edit: They launched it in 2002: http://exame2.com.br/mobile/tecnologia/noticias/itau-agora-t... Edit2: Sounds new in the US. This is not supposed to be a bragging/snarky comment. Just genuinely surprised as innovation usually come t…

Bank of America offers this as "ShopSafe", but it's buried on the BoA credit card account page and it's a flash app. It's also not available from the BoA mobile app, at least not last I looked.

It was originally offered by MBNA, and it hasn't had any development since BofA bought them. It appears almost purposefully impossible to find.

Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card

#244
> Never forget to cancel one of those pesky "30 day free trials."

This seems like a bad idea, I'm surprised they're advertising it. I'm pretty sure not being able to charge your card doesn't let you out of a contract you've signed.

I looked into this because I was too lazy to cancel a gym membership once. There are a lot of stories online of a gym sending someone's account to collections because they thought they didn't have to actually cancel it since the credit card expired.

The product still seems useful for one-time purchases though.

Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card

#245
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Got a citation on this? I'd love for it to be true, since it'll save me a lot of effort. But WSJ, for instance, requires you to cancel via phone even if you sign up online.

https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/about-visa/15-April-2...

Section: 5.9.8.2

"Provide an online cancellation procedure if the Cardholder's request for goods or services was initially accepted online"

Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card

#247
post #4

Hey 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 :)

I browse with JS disabled and your site is just a blank page for me.

lol!

Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card

#248
post #4

Hey 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 :)

I had a general question about card numbers. Say there are 3E9 people on Earth, each with 3 cards. That's around 10 digits right there. There's 1 digit for checksum. I imagine you'd want to leave space for least 1000 financial institutions around the world, so that's another 4 digits. Which means you can only have 100 transactions per person. None of this takes into account the fact that the same people are issued wa…

> Say there are 3E9 people on Earth, each with 3 cards.

You vastly overestimate the number of people with credit cards.

Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card

#249
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Privacy.com co-founder here Tell me about AVS please. Existing virtual card services have me covered on the virtual card front - both cost and (limited) privacy. I want something that gets me past the virtual card + AVS issue. All the virtual card providers seem to suck on this front...

No card issuer is going to verify a transaction of any significant value without AVS. AVS dropped fraud rates on card-not-present transactions dramatically, and it'd skyrocket without it.

AVS doesn't deny anything. Its a status code returned on the auth. Its up to the merchant to reverse the auth if AVS data shows it doesn't match(Exact Address,Zip Code, CVV) or send the auth off for settlement. Merchant has almost no recourse if transaction is marked as fraud and the AVS doesn't match.

Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card

#250
post #161

In case anyone didn't catch what this actually costs, the answer is: 1.5-2%, which is the rate you could get cash back (or airline miles/etc) with good credit. Because this service draws directly from your bank account, and takes what would otherwise be your rewards from the credit card fees their banking partners charge, it provides a nice business model for them at the cost of you getting 0% rewards back. Not worth…

In the footer it also says its accepted everywhere Visa debit cards are, NOT credit cards. That's a huge caveat because debit cards aren't as universally accepted as credit cards.

What? I don't have a credit card and I haven't run in any problem so far
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