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Comment by domador | Hacker News Reader

Having a credit card is STILL frightening. Specifically, I don't like how little verification takes place, how easy it'd be for someone else to start using my card if they gain physical possession of it, and how I wouldn't find out about purchases made on my card unless I'm actively monitoring it every day (or every hour!) I haven't yet found a bank that would send me an email or text message for every single transaction on my credit card, or the option to turn on such a service (which incidentally, should also notify me whenever that service is turned off.)

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Use an Apple Card with Apple Pay or something similar from Samsung. You are immediately notified of transactions via notifications to your phone within minutes if not seconds. It’s also much easier to access and understand your transactions

I can't speak to regional banks or credit unions, in the US, but the major US national banks ALL have options to be able to be SMS'd, email'd or in-app instantly notified for a wide variety of events on or related to a card (auths, clears, bills due, bills paid, over a balance threshold, overdrawn, etc.) and the ability to freeze the card through the app or web until it is unfrozen. Capital One even has the ability to generate a one-time PAN to be used in Internet purchases.

The Chase and Amex apps will give you push notifications. I have emails set up for some transactions on my Amex cards but not the Chase ones, I assume you can get emails for any transactions with both. Also, you have 60 days to dispute a charge and you won't be responsible for it. I make sketchy payments with my cards because I know I can dispute them and almost certainly win. I stress way more the few times I carry >$300 cash than even the times that I know a card is lost.

> haven't yet found a bank that would send me an email or text message for every single transaction on my credit card

I haven't seen that for credit credit cards (maybe due to the often-delayed auth cycles), but many debit cards (where charges are done in realtime) where I live do it by default, and my Amex sends you phone notifications if you add it in Apple Pay (even for transactions that were not done through Apple Pay)

I have a chase sapphire reserve card and get an email for every transaction. Set the "alert for transactions over amount" to $0.01. I had grand plans of piping these emails into a google sheet to track and categorize expenses but haven't completed the project yet.

The beauty of a credit card is that none of the things you're afraid of are your problem.

Just check your statement before paying the bill, and if you lose your card, freeze it. Also, most credit cards will inform you of purchases somehow, so maybe you need to get a new card.

> The beauty of a credit card is that none of the things you're afraid of are your problem.

This is true mostly if it's a magstripe or "card-not-present" transaction, or done online without two-factor authentication.

Otherwise, the burden tends to fall onto the cardholder to provide some form of proof that their card details were compromised.

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