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Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card

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Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card

#191

Post by Benjammer »

robryan wrote: post #186
Havoc wrote: 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...

Do you want your address actually verified or a feature that makes AVS useless?

Was curious about the motivations as well...

I work at a small ecommerce company and we'd be effed without our AVS service to help with CC fraud.

Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card

#192

Post by wfunction »

Nullabillity wrote: post #185
wfunction wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood why virtual numbers can't be used across different merchants. Why is this? Are there any that do offer this capability?

Doesn't that go against the whole point of this?

No, since the ability to limit the amount and the expiration date as well as the ability to close a number at will is immensely useful on its own. (Citi lets you do all of those.)

Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card

#193

Post by garduque »

electic wrote: post #126

I signed up for this. Sadly, it is not what I thought it was and the website does not make it very clear. Basically, this is for online purchases only. To make matters a bit worse, it wants to connect to your real bank account. What we need here is a physical credit card that I can use in the real-world that has a new number on each swipe. Most of my historical fraud has happened because I probably swiped my card at…

> Most of my historical fraud has happened because I probably swiped my card at a location that was compromised.

I travel a ton and also do all my shopping online, for years. I have to replace one of my three credit cards every 3-4 months. That is usually within a week or two of visiting a gas station or taxi, places where they don't use chips and in the case of taxis still have the gall to use the paper carbon copy machine things. Whatever though, when a card gets lifted Chase takes care of the charges and overnights me a new card wherever I am (even international).

Although I've had many notifications over the years about my card data "possibly" being compromised in some online breach, I don't know that it's every been a real issue.

This service makes sense if you don't have a (real) credit card and for some reason want to link your real cash account to a payment service. Otherwise I don't think I get it, or why I would forget my credit card, anyway.

Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card

#194

Post by nommm-nommm »

callumlocke wrote: post #143
nommm-nommm wrote: post #78

"Never forget the cancel one of those pesky 30 day free trials." This is very misleading to say the least. Not paying for a service doesn't cancel a service. If they tried to bill your card and the card was rejected that doesn't mean the service is cancelled.

The point is they can't charge you again. I'm struggling to see what you are getting at here.

They may be able to still bill you and you may be legally obligated to pay, you are just taking away their way of automatically collecting the bill. You may still actually owe the bill; just because you didn't pay a bill doesn't mean you don't owe the money.

All this depends on the company, what you signed up for, if it was a contract, the TOS, etc, etc, etc.

For a real silly example to illustrate - lets say I signed up for Comcast and gave them a single use credit card number for automatic bill pay. When the second month comes around they attempt to charge my credit card and the card is declined. That doesn't mean I suddenly don't have to pay my Comcast bill, it just means they can't collect it automatically. Comcast will take a few months to cut off service[1] so you'll end up owing them several hundred dollars. Eventually if you don't pay they could send you to collections. Collections can take you to court and then when they win they can garish your wages, etc, etc.

Yes, I know this is a silly example and its unlikely to happen with the majority of "free trial" services on the net but that doesn't mean its responsible to basically advertise "yeah, just give any company a temporary number for a free trial and forget about it." Especially since a lot of services with a free trial are with companies that have a lot of resources.

A less silly example would be if I signed up for a gym with a two year agreement and a year later I canceled my credit card and stopped going to the gym. In that case the odds of me being billed further and sent to collections is very very high.

[1] they do that around here, I know someone who only pays their Comcast bill every 4 months or so...

Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card

#195

Post by nommm-nommm »

boling11 wrote: post #88
nommm-nommm wrote: post #75

So what happens when I have to return something and they put the money back on the card I used to purchase it?

The refund will go directly back to your original funding account.

How does this work if the number is temporary? Is there a time limit for a refund?

Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card

#196

Post by comex »

boling11 wrote: 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 :)

FYI, your site has a CSS bug: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1237941/Screen%20Shot%20...

Another: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1237941/Screen%20Shot%20...

The expiration date and CVV aren't fully visible - and for some reason clicking the "Open" button does nothing, so I can't close it.

Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card

#197

Post by dogma1138 »

Mastercard has this service in quite a few countries, the downside is that usually they do not offer the same insurance as for the normal cerdit card and those cards will not pass an actual credit check. Other issuers, banks, and other organizations (post office for example) also offered similar services.

I never really liked these services they don't really support recurring payments, some of them force you to purchase a card with a specific amount rather than it being valid for a specific transaction, some times they have issues with various 3d party checks (pre-paid card check, region lock/address verification, fraud etc.) and more importantly it's not an elegant solution as you end up with allot of credit card numbers.

Overall while this one might have a nice UX it doesn't really solve a problem that hasn't already been solved either through Paypal or trough your own credit card company. I can see all payments on my Amex and Visa cards in the UK, I can check which ones are recurring, I can initiate a charge back and for everything else well there's paypal which offers even an easier UX.

Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card

#198

Post by dogma1138 »

mkolodny wrote: post #157
boling11 wrote: 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 :)

How do your Privacy virtual cards affect your credit? Not at all?

They are prepaid cards so it's more like a debit card than an actual credit card.

The money is transferred from your account before the card is issued / transaction go through so it's pretty much a charge card.

Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card

#199

Post by seanp2k2 »

ikeboy wrote: post #127
alogray wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really - Paypal was doing it via their browser toolbar ages ago , back when toolbars were still a thing. They stopped offering this functionality back in 2009, I think. That said, it's not particularly common at US banks despite being a horrifically useful feature (Bank of America has it, but I'm not aware of anyone else). I'm excited that I can hop on and use Privacy but it seems like it's more of a feature than…

Virtual cards from Citi and masked cards from Abine.com

Virtual citi cards are nice in theory, but the web app to make them it pretty cumbersome to use, and the desktop app to do it just feels super icky. They also have short expiration limits, so it's not great to use for subscriptions where you ideally set and forget.

Edit: the web app for Citi was also a flash app last time I checked (few months ago). That plus them not supporting 2FA for every login makes me not use it.

Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card

#200

Post by seanp2k2 »

ac29 wrote: 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…

Esp when Citi offers this on the DoubleCash card, which is 2% (though the experience of the Flash-based or desktop-app-based Citi number generator combined with their lack of support for require-every-time 2FA make it a lot less than ideal)
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