Privacy.com Reissuing All Cards

Is this rolling out slowly, or did I join after this was already implemented for new cards? I see no cards on privacy.com/reissue and haven't gotten any notifications. I signed up in October.

Why force the change onto customers though? Most people understand the difference between a debit card and a credit card, and as someone who's had Privacy.com cards denied because it was a prepaid MC debit card and not a real CC, I've experienced what the problem was. But for merchants where the prepaid debit card works, why can I not continue using that card number there?

Privacy.com is a wonderful service, but it already automatically locks to the first merchant the card is used on. If it's already working for that merchant, Why do I have to change the card number? Use the credit card updater mechanism (the same mechanism for when a CC gets stolen but my Netflix keeps working and they get the new number somehow) for all merchants that support that - that should keep the customer load down.

I have hundreds of cards! Why are you forcing me to do this?! I have no time! Honestly, I'd probably just move to my main card, which almost never changes! Tomorrow you may decide to do something again! I really don't have time to babysit this! You should grandfather all cards and allow customers to change them if they want, otherwise, they should be valid till their expiration date! You're asking us to do a lot of work during the holiday season - this is crazy, really!

It it possible to continue using Privacy.com without providing an SSN?

As I commented in a thread below, I had started using your service connected to a debit card via my credit union. Then was required to attach a bank account/routing number as the source for funding and didn't receive an adequate answer as to why (which is fine, but it's slower to process and it requires that I provide more sensitive information). I get that Privacy is obligated to gather certain financial information for regulatory purposes and fraud prevention, but it feels like I'm widening my attack surface providing that info.

> In an attempt to stay current with changes in card network and bank requirements

What were the most important changes from the networks in banks that precipitated this?

Requiring an SSN is an important change. Did prior requirements not do enough to prevent abuse of their services?

This is a huge inconvenience, and dressing it up as an "Exciting Update" is Orwellian. I was a paying subscriber, but I'll be cancelling my subscription now.

I'd like to thank privacy.com for making this change.

It sounds like most people aren't aware, but recently merchants have been coming down hard on privacy.com. I've almost given up using it. Hetzner and GCP are the most problematic, but I've seen it elsewhere too.

I'm not happy about having to reissue, but I will be happy if this forces vendors to take my privacy.com card.

(Everyone else is complaining, so I thought I'd at least try to balance it out a little.)

EDIT: Well, never mind. Apparently their new cards are still getting rejected. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29438181

I was really excited...

I didn't get an email about this, disappointing to find out first on HN. I assume there will be plenty of customers who just "miss" this and find out the hard way next month. Also 1 month notice during the holidays is really bad timing when you've had it available since early october.

Hi Jason,

I posted this here originally, and wow this blew up, I think we've actually spoken over email as I was one of the earliest users of privacy. I've been using it for many years and abjectly love the service.

I don't object to you reissuing cards. Like I mentioned in my other comment, I actually see a lot of positives (no more prepaid issues!), however, only giving people 30 days to update their cards in dozens (I literally have 81 open privacy cards) is "not fun" and up until now, using your service has been smooth, painless and something which this change (mostly the timing of it) just completely deflated.

I updated like 4 or 5 cards so far, each one took me 5-10 minutes, on the outside I'm looking at (worst case) 13 hours of work I have to fit into the month of December (which with the holidays and year end biz items, is already the busiest).

Yesterday, your service was just a dream to use, today it is a burden I have to find hours of time to fix.

Sorry, I do truly love privacy and didn't post this to hurt you or privacy, but I hope you can extend the deadline.

Best of luck to you and all of the privacy team.

First off let me start with how much I love your platform, I use it religiously. My experience has been great except for a few times it fell short and it's not something forgotten easily. My account has been suspended twice after trying to make purchases (both for under $50 purchases), one of them at a Ft Lauderdale pizza shop and the other was a online merchant. Both times I had to open support tickets and wait over 24 hours for support while I was locked out of my account. It turned out there's a blacklist of merchants that your not allowed to make purchases at but support couldn't give me the blacklist. So it's like a game of russian roulette if my account will get suspended for making purchases. Can you share any information on how this problem has been solved?

I suggested to support that if someone is able to log in, pass 2fa, that should be enough to prove it's not fraudulent. I don't think support ever responded to my suggestions.

Thank You

Just want to say,I LOVE your service! Thank you all for your hard work and what's been a flawless user experience up to this point.

I've been with y'all since the very early days.

I have no idea how you all make money but I hope you all are around for many years to come.

Also, it looks like we have to manually update them in 1Password. Out of hundreds of cards, I had only 5 listed for reussing. Why only 5?! Why not hundreds?

Always bugged me when I tried to use a Privacy card on Digital Ocean

It looks like they have added a manual payment option, though certainly not preferred, so that they can technically comply with some definition of charge card perhaps?

https://support.privacy.com/hc/en-us/articles/4414521565719-...

For reference:

> On December 31, 2021, we will close all Visa Privacy Cards that have not been updated. In order to continue using Privacy.com without interruption, we need you to complete a few simple steps. Visit our FAQs to learn more.

Via the popup transition tool when logging in.

Sad they couldn't keep existing cards open till they expire, but just recently their card expiration dates jumped to lasting till 2027 so I see why.

If it makes you feel better, your SSN is dumped into thousands of leaks already, most likely.

Maybe it's because you have your funding source as your bank account, but I was never asked to provide my SSN with a debit card funding source.

Hi -- I'm the head of legal and compliance for Privacy.com. Unfortunately this is a bank partner requirement, otherwise we wouldn't ask.

We do take customer privacy and security very seriously, and have worked hard to have similar data security safeguards as larger companies like Square and Stripe (both places I've worked, so I would know!). You can read more about some of our security practices here. https://privacy.com/security

It's a little ironic that privacy.com is asking for your SSN lol.

... Oh.

I just posted a thank-you to Privacy, because I assumed it fixed this problem.

I guess I'll edit it. That's unfortunate.

Totally agree, especially about the bubbly language used to dress up what is almost certainly a major inconvenience. I've been using their service for years, but if I have to change all of the cards that I have on file everywhere, I might as well just put in my CC details and get the cashback/points.

I found the opposite, oddly, only a tiny % of vendors wouldn't accept prepaid cards. I do agree it was all services where I REALLY wanted to use privacy.

That said, the only great thing about this, is that the new cards are re-classed as "charge card" and not "prepaid" card, so, they fixed it!

If only they did it with more than 30 days notice I would have been ecstatic.

I read it the same way as well, but my reasoning was that vague/generic/neutral headlines tend to be associated with bad news. E.g. Google's "spring cleaning"

To be clear to anyone who's reading along here instead of the site, they're reissuing cards because they are changing the way their card issuance works in order to improve merchant compatibility (which is definitely needed).

As such they have to use, presumably, a different set of card numbers/prefixes/whatever that the card issuers dictate. No security incident prompted this.

I hope they're making enough money. They offer a fantastic service, and they do have paid tiers as well.

I hope the fees keep them afloat, but they are one online service that I wouldn't mind paying a monthly subscription for.

So the processing fees (called interchange) are capped at a $0.21+0.05% low rate for most banks, but very small banks and credit unions are exempt from this cap, and charge ~2% similar to credit cards. Fintechs always partner with a small bank to issue their cards and split the revenue.

So the thing is, most of their customers are going to be connecting a debit card from a large bank (they don't allow credit cards as a funding source). A few will come from a Durbin-exempt institution like a small credit union or a community bank (including one issued by another fintech/bank partnership such as Chime). But on the whole, they will mostly be paying the low interchange and charging the high interchange.

Since the new cards are considered credit cards, not debit cards, they won't have to worry about Durbin amendment at all.

Hi -- head of legal and compliance for Privacy.com. tl;dr is US consumer card types have lots of rules and laws attached, and we needed to have folks accept some new terms before we could give you all access to the new card types. Thanks for using our service!

Thanks for using the product -- head of legal and compliance here.

Emails are going out in phases. But if you log into your dashboard, you should be prompted to accept the new terms and re-issue any merchant locked cards.

Some folks will already be on the new product if they signed up during our public beta period, so if you don't hear from us you're likely already on the new card types.

They never sent any kind of notification. I found out when I started getting payments declined and emails threatening to suspend services

Never heard of Blur, but I've used Privacy.com successfully for... man, maybe five years?

Never had any issues with them. Not one. They always Just Work, their app doesn't change every six months, I hardly ever have to log in. Everything 'Just Works'. They've been great.

The card reset is a tad unfortunate but isn't really an issue since they're all named/branded accordingly.

Privacy.com has been fantastic for me - AMA.

However I am such a heavy user that this announcement is actually rather annoying. I didn't see an email about it yet either, and could have easily missed that I am going to need to update 10 or so subscriptions this month :/

I’m not associated with Privacy in anyway. I’ve had a couple of inconvenient things happened to my account, I can’t remember the details right now, but in interacting with their customer support I got the sense that it was algorithms that weren’t tuned correctly yet. That may be what happened with you?

I liked the idea and always wanted to use it more. I actually only used it once because I was dealing with a potential subscription hassle and that card actually got stolen! A bad charge was reported from privacy.com (and of course did not go through).

Pretty cool service.

Revolut has disposable cards but those are not exactly the same, because they always get destroyed after one payment rather than being able to keep using it for one merchant. Also on the free plan you can only have one normal and one disposable card active at a time.

Affirm fully supports the use of virtual cards. You can use the app to generate a new visa card for every purchase.

I’ve been using the free tier for about two years and love it. I’m not associated in any way. It works flawlessly, just as long as the merchant accepts prepaid debit cards. I’ve created hundreds of privacy cards and have only had a couple of merchants not accept them.

As a side note, the integration with 1password (whom I have worked for but no longer) is just :chef_kiss: You can create a privacy card from the merchant’s checking form and it gets saved in 1Password.

Why not setup a backup system with another provider now?

The problem isn't needing to change card partners, it's not having (not having negotiated?) a 1+ year period where already-issued cards will continue to work. Having a year or more to gradually change cards the next time I buy something from each merchant would be a minor inconvenience. In the best case, it would be 2+ years and by then, it would hardly be a concern at all.

Privacy.com's mistake wasn't needing to change issuers; as you said, that's unavoidable. Rather, it was forcing customers to cut over existing cards in 3 weeks, then lying to customers by pretending this was an upgrade rather than something required by their issuer.

It is located at privacy.com/reissue

Sorry, I don't follow but feel like I should. At the risk of dissecting the frog[0], could you possibly explain?

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/440683-explaining-a-joke-is...