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Comment by jeffmould | Hacker News Reader

Had a similar thing happen with one of my cards that got stolen. My bank canceled the card and sent me a new one. While no more fraudulent charges went through after that, I was puzzled when my automatic charges continued without failure. My bank told me that since the account was not closed and reopened, they just sent me a new card with a new number on the same account, thus only updating the same account. When this happens some processors receive your new card details and automatically update their records. I know Stripe does, although I don't know if they do it for both the number and expiration date, or just the expiration date. Either way, it is scary flaw in the banking system. (https://stripe.com/blog/smarter-saved-cards)

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It's definitely feature, not flaw; think of all the lost revenue from merchants/acquirers/issuers/associations/etc when a card needs to be legitimately replaced (e.g. updating your Netflix subscription is the last thing on your mind if you lost your wallet). Full disclosure: currently working on a product that does this very thing.

This is not a feature, as very few people expect it to work this way. The mental model people have is that they give out their card number only, not access to the underlying account. If I lose a card and get a new one, I understand it's my responsibility to update that number at relevant recurring charge accounts. Is that annoying? Sure. But if you aren't doing that, it is your responsibility to tell me in giant bold red letters that I am granting you access to the underlying account, and allow me to agree to that, and then confirm again that I really want to agree to that.

This may be a "feature" but it's a kludge.

I can appreciate that for many consumers, having your card expire is an annoying anachronism with no benefit. They simply want it to keep working so that their Netflix account keeps working.

The fact that this "feature" exists suggests that the credit card companies have realized and accepted this, and wish to offer a way to effectively circumvent card expiration. That is reasonable, but instead of refactoring the status quo to enable cards with longer (or simply indefinite) expiration periods, they implement this "feature". And now credit cards and payment processing becomes even more complicated. Bleh.

I'm sure there is substantial regulatory and technical inertia that can explain why they're doing it this way, but still.. Bleh.

I can agree with your reasoning, and I see the value for all parties involved for a relationship to not be disrupted.

Personal story time:

Where I live, the local toll authority has a very bad reputation for their tactics of enforcement (surprise). Well, following the TJMaxx hack, my financial provider saw I shopped there during the window, cancelled the card and got me a new one. Very cool. I updated as many of my accounts as I could remember. Forgot the toll authority, whoops.

They send me a bill in the mail somehow turning 35 unpaid tolls into a fee of $700+ dollars. I wrote them explaning that in good faith I had it on auto pay, and I would be happy to pay the tolls, 1 late fee, and 1 processing charge. A total of ~$70.

They waited until the absolute last day to respond (according to postmark), which meant by the time I got their letter telling me "NO!" they had already sent my information to collections. Eventually a collection letter showed up. I responded in writing noting that the debt was not valid as written ($700+) and if they got the number right, I would pay it...never heard from them again, and it never showed up on my credit report.

Anyway, the feature you describe is good for businesses, but when some businesses act shitty like that toll authority, the feature benefits the consumer in a clear way.

Are you by chance a Texas resident? The Texas Tollway system is a mess, and they recently drew the ire of the government for it.

As a consumer, I'll side with "flaw". Every time my bank says "we gave you a new card number because fraud", its a golden opportunity to review my recurrent charges / subscriptions. Each of them emails me pleading for money, and I get to re-evaluate whether I really need that service.

Sure, updating the number is inconvenient, but that inconvenience ends up saving me money almost every time. Maybe this is a sign of my poor financial responsibility more than anything else, but I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Whether you want to consider it a feature or a bug, its certainly unexpected. My bank tells me "we have closed your old card", and then proceeds to accept charges for said card. How am I to react, other than "wtf"?

I don't necessarily mind it as a "feature"; however, the problem is that most, if not all, credit card customers don't know and/or understand this "feature". When you have your credit card stolen, call your bank, and they reissue you a new card with new number, you would assume that the bank would not send an update for those types of new cards. If it was simply sending a new card (in which case the number rarely changes) then I can understand sending the update.

Mastercard calls it the "Automatic Billing Updater" [1].

For non-fraud related reissues, it's not a flaw but actually an enhancement: you don't have to remember to update your card information whenever your card expires.

[1] http://www.mastercard.com/us/merchant/pdf/MasterCard_Automat...

It's a feature for expired cards, it's a flaw for stolen credit cards. I know plenty of people that will report a card stolen and then cancel the card to avoid dealing with that kind of crap.

My Xbox Live account did this. I couldn't be bothered cancelling it but knew my card expired in two months. A year later I look back and notice they've collected the money all the same. It only stopped working after a couple of years later (yes, I am that averse to calling customer support).

Yeh there is an account updater service you can integrate with. So if you change cards it will expose that through the service and a company's billing service can continue unperturbed even if you change cards and credit card numbers.

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