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Comment by carbocation | Hacker News Reader

Just like I can have application-specific passwords for my Google account, I wish I could have application-specific credit card numbers from my CC issuer.

If I had these, I would immediately cancel my Linode-specific CC# and reissue a new one. I would not have to worry that my other recurring bills will go unpaid, or spend hours dealing with tracking them down and changing them.

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Bank of America provides this [1], as does Citibank [2] and likely others.

Paypal at one time provided this service as well, but it doesn't seem to anymore [3]

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

2: https://www.citibank.com/us/cards/gen-content/messages/van/i...

3: https://www.paypal.com/va/webapps/mpp/security/general-freet...

Crazy, thanks for sharing. I use BofA and am interested, but here is the issue:

> Set your Valid through date for up to 1 year in the future

I'd really like it to be up to the expiration date of my card. It's probably worth doing anyway, I suppose. Thanks for the heads up. Given the zero-liability status, I'm surprised that banks don't promote this feature more visibly.

I've used the BoA and it's fantastic for one-time purchases. Like another commenter mentioned, it's only good for 1 year and you give a global cap. It would be nice if it was more permanent and allowed for a weekly or monthly cap so you could use it with subscription services or something like Amazon.

Nice. I wonder if any UK providers do this

My bank in Sweden does (Swedbank), so it's not a US-only thing. They even have an iPhone app for it.

The portuguese ATM network operator provides this for free (its called mbnet btw). You can even set expiry times and value limit, it's the best thing to use when paying for stuff online. Want to buy a 9€ game? Just create a 10€ card and use it.

Yup, I use this all the time. They even, recently, added support to multi-use cards with bigger expire dates.

I wonder how hard would it be to make a startup like this.

>I wish I could have application-specific credit card numbers from my CC issuer

Do some research on "virtual account numbers". I haven't used them myself, so I can't verify how well they work.

Visa have this (probably others too) that you can generate and either set a time or value limit on. Don't think you can set a monthly limit though unfortunately. They call it e-cards (in sweden at least).

Either this, or a assignable CVV codes. Something like that would be awesome.

That wouldn't work since CVV codes aren't sent with recurring transactions (they can't, since they cannot be stored).

__should__ not be stored

Good point. Regardless, there should be __something__.

Why can't they be stored?

Is it a legal requirement to prevent merchants without the CCV from using the credit card?

...oh wait

Because the CVV is used to indicate the "presence" of the customer at a transaction. CVV1 (which is on the magstripe) is used to indicate "card-present" physical transactions, CVV2 (printed on the back) is used for "customer just typed this in" non-physical transactions.

That makes much more sense. Thank you.

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