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Comment by GavinB | Hacker News Reader

A service that sits between my bank account and subscription services that only accepts charges that I've preapproved.

This would let me keep track of the services that I have so I don't end up with subscriptions to sites or services that I've forgotten about. It would also let me revoke permission to charge the account at any time. No need to cancel a card if one won't cancel or changes the fees--you just revoke their permission individually.

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Bank of America has this - it's called shopsafe. You create temporary credit cards with fixed spending limits. You can cancel a individual number at any time.

That's awesome. I wish Chase had that.

A gym I was part of required me to send my plastic barcode / keyfab to a PO Box in order to cancel my subscription. Kind of ridiculous. I'm pretty sure they'd continually charge me and send me to collections if the charges just got denied. Something to think about - canceling contractual subscriptions may require more than just a failed credit card.

There are two different things - contract cancellation and access to your account. They can be changed independently, and should be. Subscription contract usually does not transfer ownership, so you still own your account and should be able to deny its usage to anyone. It could be breach of contract but then they could use collections, courts, etc. to resolve it - that's different business.

Direct Debit in the UK does this. You can cancel any instruction at any time, usually through your online banking where all instructions and charges are listed.

It is widespread and the norm for subscriptions.

In Israel, the same arrangement exists. I was very surprised when I learned that in the US you give to the company your account number and they basically can initiate money pulls any time they like and the bank does not have a list where you say who is approved and who is not. That seems to be kind of backwards and insecure. I know there are probably ample reasons for that but I'd feel much better if it was arranged like that. Paypal and Amazon Payments and other systems like this provide partial solutions but why banks wouldn't do that? Looks like something that belongs there.

Same here in Portugal. And we also have free virtual CCs with predefined limits.

Or sits between any charge, sends you alerts and genuinely manages fraud risk better than banks. Also provides community information on chargebacks. Basically, a service that works for the consumer rather than the companies paying the fees. Uses contextual advertising based on what you are buying.

Recently I found a service like that. I haven't tested it but they claim to mask cards- https://dnt.abine.com/#premiumreg

The features look nice, but they don't really say WHAT they do or how they do it. Could someone fill me in?

No clue. Just came across it a few days ago. Maybe they have a trial? Definitely an interesting space to be in.

Zach here from Abine (we make the Masked Cards). If you use our browser extension you can make disposable credit cards for your transactions right from online checkout pages. The best way to use a Masked Card is to create it for the exact amount of the transaction once you know the total. Then when you use it, the card instantly becomes worthless. In this way it works like a gift card.

We also have iPhone and Android app's where you can create these Masked Cards in stores as you're about to check out. Cashiers just need to be willing to type in the 16 digit # and expiration, which they usually are fine with.

BillGuard does something similar - it checks your online credit statement, and notifies you when a suspicious charge appears.

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