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Comment by ekanes | Hacker News Reader

Been using this card for a few months.

Re folks saying it's been done before, it makes me think of the William Gibson quote "The future's already here, it's just not evenly distributed."

Even if it has been done before (I have no idea) -- if something makes a new tech available to many more people, it's effectively new to them.

In terms of using the card, my wife and I have found it useful. It feels empowering to give the card to a service/person and know you remain in control. Yes, all cards let you do chargebacks, or recover from fraudulent charges, but I don't want to have to fight to recover my money.

I love the feeling of using a number and knowing no other charges can come - that number can never be used again.

This card is empowering.

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How long ago did you get signed up?

I signed up 2/28/15. That day there were 40090 people ahead of me Jimmy. Now there are 40091 people ahead of me. So not only has one single person managed to cut in front of me, but the line hasnt moved since prior to February 2015.

That rant/inquiry aside, http://privacy.com/ gave me an account and I have been very happy with it. Seems like a good product.

privacy.com is US-only.

Isn't this as well?

I think this is the reason (from their site):

  Want to move up faster?

  Share Final with your friends on social media through one of the links below and jump the line when they sign up.

the reason the queue has moved exactly 1 spot?

sounds to me like the signup was fake and only people who share get invited in.

Bank Of America has been doing this for a while, but the interface is terrible, so I welcome competition in this space. Integration with a password manager (like 1password) would be really convenient!

https://www.bankofamerica.com/privacy/accounts-cards/shopsaf...

Other cards might do chargebacks and fraudulent charge recovery, but I look at online services like Playstation Network. If your account is compromised, and you do a chargeback, they will ban your account and you lose access to all your digital content. On top of this, they often will not even provide a refund for content purchased by someone who has compromised your account.

Having the ability to give them a completely different card # with a monthly limit for just them really provides an additional layer of protection without the threat of losing access to goods you legally acquired.

Wouldn't they also be likely to lock you account or ban you for non-payment when you cancel the Final generated credit card number?

More likely they would lock your account until you pay up, which is different from the digital equivalent of confiscating all your stuff ie, getting banned.

Your account is charged when purchases happen. So your account would not be locked. You just couldn't make any additional purchases until you updated your account.

Chargebacks are the big problem for companies that operate like this.

> On top of this, they often will not even provide a refund for content purchased by someone who has compromised your account.

That would be the CC company's job, not? IIRC, at least in US law, if you dispute a charge they can't make you pay for it and they can't also add interest to it. And in practice, no signature dispute is almost always decided for the consumer. That's why merchants are so drastic with compromised accounts - otherwise people would just buy stuff, use it and then claim fraud, and merchants would lose tons of money. They have to create disincentive to cheat.

this is correct, its called a chargeback.

"disputing a charge" is the chargeback mentioned by OP. Yes, you can dispute the charge, but only if you are willing to risk losing your account entirely.

> Even if it has been done before (I have no idea)

I had this idea myself, I Googled it and found nothing. Visa has 3D Secure (which is really just a text-delivered OTP), but implementing the standard is completely optional. I've only come across it on a handful of websites.

Pity it's US only for now.

I think the more relevant functionality is called in France "e-carte bleue" : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paiement_sur_Internet#La_e-car... (Sorry, only in French).

You generate a fake card number, this number is linked with an expiration date AND a maximal amount that can be charged.

The quality of the service varies between banks though, I remember my previous bank who forced me to go over a sketchy-looking website and use a Flash applet to generate the card...

AFAIK it's not possible to create a card with a monthly chargeable maximum amount, only to set the total amount for the card's lifetime, which limits the interest of the use for recurring payments.

Paypal had this years ago as well as a plugin, and they got rid of it unfortunately.

Citi had virtual CCs some time ago. It was very annoying to use and buried somewhere, so I didn't really use it. No idea if still supported.

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