Steal this startup idea – please | Hacker News Reader

Steal this startup idea – please

3 pointsandrewstuart9 comments

So my credit card was compromised.

Now I need to work out every organisation that auto charges to that card, then inform them all of the new payment arrangement.

Surely this happens hundreds of thousands of times a day around world?

The idea: solve it so people don't have to embark on the daunting and unfun task.

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If your bank replaces the card then often the recurring charges will be transferred automatically to the new card. (Equally, you often cannot cancel recurring charges to a card by simply cancelling the current card.)

I doubt hundreds of thousands of people get their cards compromised every day. Maybe a couple hundred.

Even so, how is this a startup?

It is a good startup idea, a great one even... if the year was 1998 and PayPal and similar didn't exist.

Sorry to sound boring, but don't you think it's a good idea to know who is charging you and how much. You probably have subscriptions you don't need any more.

It surprises me how extremely dumb the legacy financial system is.

And how very easy to is to build more secure financial infrastructure using cryptography. But no one is almost doing anything.

Do your statements ID autocharges?

I was thinking the same thing.

This looks like a singular feature rather than a startup idea.

And also a feature which exists that way for reasons (not everybody with the details of a lost or stolen card actually has the right to bill you, not everybody you gave card details to in the past deserves up to date card details to bill you again in future, and an organization that stored card details for the purpose of sharing with third parties might encounter a few PCI compliance issues even in the unlikely event of people being willing to pay for their services)

Lastly, a particular service having access to a card number to bill you with that isn't affected by the status of cards you share with anyone else is a solved problem with virtual card numbers...

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