Comment by terhechte | Hacker News Reader

Comment by terhechte | Hacker News Reader

I was just thinking whether I had ever bought anything at Target, and then remembered, yes, but that's 7 years ago, and I've gotten new credit cards since. But then I wondered which other online services I had used with my credit card, and it occurred to me how awesome it would be if I had one-time throw-away credit cards, that I could use for only one purchase at one retailer and then throw it away. Now, I know that gift cards work this way, and could theoretically be used in such a way, but they're usually locked to a specific retailer or one can't use them for online purchasing.

Then I realised that, really with all the flack it is getting, Bitcoin is such a solution. Once the conversion from $ to BTC is done, there's no way to get your credit card data or anything. You're practically immune against any data theft at the place where you're purchasing. Now, of course the problem only shifted as you have to guard your private keys now, but that's more or less a question of tooling and usability of proper BTC clients (which hopefully come up in the future). I'd rather have the valuable information stored in an open source application used by millions with strong code review, than in a closed source web app where an intern wrote the code in php and forgot the salt or stored everything plaintext.

This alone sounds to me like a pretty strong incentive.

BofA has a feature called ShopSafe that lets you generate virtual credit card numbers tied to your main card. They got it when they acquired MBNA/FIA Card Services. According to the Wikipedia article[1] a couple of other banks have offered similar services over the years as well (though looks like a couple have been canceled).

With ShopSafe, each virtual card has a custom expiration of 2-12 months, a max spending limit (ex: $100), and only a single merchant can bill to it. That last feature is important as it means that even if it's leaked before the shorter expiration period nothing should be able to be charged to it. Recurring charges are possible though (ie the same initial merchant can charge you again) so you can use it for situations that require recurring billing. Either way the spending limit still applies.

Anonymity aside, I'd argue that virtual credit cards are even better than BTC from a consumer's perspective as you still have the power of charge backs. Each one has the same rights as your original card including the right to declare a purchase as fraudulent (ex: the merchant didn't ship the goods).

Would be cool if someone would create a physical version of these virtual cards that gets created on the fly for each transaction. I was hoping that Coin or one of the other "virtual physical cards" would do that but I guess that'll come later.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ShopSafe

Central Europe has good security tools for this. For example whitelist for transaction. Or approval for each transaction via SMS. Or temporary unlocking card while shopping

The killer feature to me would be the ability to load up one time card numbers on a device like coin (or something similar). Virtual card numbers work great online, but don't seem to fill a similar purpose offline.

Meh.. My Citi Card has one-time use codes with the benefit of the normal protections of having a credit card (insurance, fraud prevention, customer service, etc). This problem is solved for people that care to solve it.

I'm not trying to shill for Citi, I'm actually dropping them for other BS, but I assume other cards have it as well.

[1] - https://www.citibank.com/us/cards/gen-content/messages/van/i...

Yes others banks have this feature as well

Thanks, I didn't know that. May be something which hasn't turned up in Germany yet, or my quaint old bank has never come around to implement this. I'll go and see if there's a way to get that for my credit card.

Thanks for the info.

It's a common feature of Swedish banks as well, so at least it's available elsewhere in Europe. My bank calls it "e-cards"

Except you're already immune to fraud/theft because your bank has a Zero Fraud Liability policy.

The security of your credit card number is quite simply not your problem. It's up to the people who actually are on the hook to fix the infrastructure, and so far they still find it cheaper to eat the losses than to upgrade security.

Those already exist. They're Visa cards or Mastercards and you can purchase them at most major retailers. You load them with moneys at the retailer, then you can use them anywhere, like you would a debit or credit card. They've existed for the better part of 10 years in the general public. I honestly thought that was common knowledge.

Or was that just a sales pitch for BTC?

Prepaid cards cost a shitload of money (15€ p.a. fee, plus 1-5€ per top-up). While this may be something for you if your credit report is too smashed for banks to give you a "real" one, I consider the prepaid cc's as last-resort.

The prepaid cards I've seen only cost about $0-2.50 USD. I've never seen one as high as $20 USD (which is what 15€ currently exchanges to).

Arguably, prepaid cards from shopping malls aren't a good solution anyway. If you're paying for them in cash, then you'll never build up a credit history. And if you pay for them with your credit card... well then that's pointless since you may be buying them from the next Target.

> If you're paying for them in cash, then you'll never build up a credit history.

Unless you rent or buy a home, have utility bills, rent or buy a car, etc. You don't have to use credit cards for retail transactions to build up a credit history.

No, not a sales pitch, I really didn't know that this was possible. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6943694

Yes, except the volatility of BitCoin makes it too risky for the average consumer to try and use it as any kind of a currency. Plus, couldn't the bitcoin exchange that you input your credit card to get similarly hacked? There wouldn't be just one, basic rules of competition would mean there would be multiple outlets offering this service. And in the course of rushing to market, most of them would implement broken security.

There's a big difference, however: if your credit card is stolen, the maximum loss you have to worry about is $50 and it's usually $0. With Bitcoin there's no way to reverse theft unless you can get the entire world to rollback to a known state making it impossible to recover losses other than by suing and getting alternative payments.

See this announcement earlier this year from the major card networks: http://cardnotpresent.com/news/cnp-news-oct13/Amex,__MasterC...

I used to have a credit card from a company (FIA, I believe) that offered this exact feature. You'd go to their website and request a one-time-use (or perhaps it was a very short time limit) credit card number and specify a purchase limit for it. It was a great feature. A bit cumbersome to use a lot, but it worked.

People tend to use these for purchase they deem are high-risk such as from an unknown or shady looking merchant.

The problem we are seeing is that it's often the big, legitimate merchants that are targets (ha) of high-tech theft. The kind of merchant for which you'd never think to use a one time use card.

Pay with Paypal and you don't have this problem, only they have your card number.

(yadda yadda weren't a bank, etc.)

Now you have a different problem, fearing breaches at Paypal (and their record isn't clean on this front either)

And now paypal bans you and freezes your account for 8 months because they feel like it.

I thought this breach only affected cards that were used at Targets right after thanksgiving up until the breach was discovered last week?

Can you buy BTC without giving your card details to exchange?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com