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Privacy.com — Get a new virtual card for every transaction
Privacy.com is an innovative way to protect your personal information over the internet. Are you feeling uncomfortable using your credit card online? Privacy.com has the perfect solution - it creates a virtual card that masks your bank statements for your online payments.
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@_jacksmith Thanks! Refunds will go directly back to your funding account.
@_jacksmith same boat here. Dropped Blur when they started tacking on the $2 fee per transaction. They lost a long-term customer overnight. Really was a shame. Stoked to try this one out tho.
@anodigital yeah, I had been using them for a long time as well. I even requested access to their ACH beta program but months later they still wouldn't onboard me. such a shame. The annoying thing with Blur is that they also tried to do loads of other things like mask all your passwords, so the chrome extension was very intrusive.
Privacy.com is perfect for free trials. No more setting a calendar reminder to cancel your account.
Just create a burner card with a $1 limit, and the whole cancellation process will work itself out. 😬
Pros:Prevents your credit card from being stolen. Perfect for free trials.
Cons:Can't be used for in-store transactions like Final.com
Great execution. Just curious though, is there way to track the transaction to the original credit card or is it some sort o encrypted?
And BTW, that's a great domain you have. How did you get it? 🙈
Glad to see this concept come back around! Hopefully, you do it right.
in around 1997-98 the bank I was at launched a version of this, called one-time account numbers - it was very popular even though you had to come to our website, enter all the details of the transaction and get a unique one-time account number to use for that specific transaction on some merchants website... It was cancelled once we had enough data to see exactly what people were using it for... internal code name 'kid porn card' though it was more often drugs... still, lots of porn too.
Since you are touting privacy of the transactions how are you monitoring for illegal activity? Eventually, the Feds are going to ask for transactions details. It didn't go well when the NSA asked the encrypted email service for a key they could not (would not) provide - they took the service down.
It's a cool idea and could likely stop all kinds of common fraud though banks do a very good job of shutting that down immediately these days. Github is the only website that causes me a problem, every single month I get a fraud alert for that account, they have way too many chargebacks apparently :D
@bolingj Given that browsers store card numbers for you so auto-fill is already easy enough plus how good card issuers are these days at real-time fraud protection what is the specific problem that the company is attempting to solve?
@helloduane Thanks for the thoughtful post!
First off - for folks doing something illegal that may result in a subpoena, this is not the product for you 😬. As a US financial services product we do have to abide by AML / KYC.
Broadly speaking, there's 2 points that we think are compelling:
1) We just think that you just shouldn't have to share your personal info with a random merchant you want to buy something from. This notion that passing along your billing info is going some how substantially cutting down on fraud is ridiculous. It's anti-privacy in the guise of being anti-fraud.
2) We like the idea that multiple numbers puts the control back in your hands as a consumer. You can track down and see exactly which merchant stole/leaked your info. You don't have to update all your cards at every site every time your card is used fraudulently. And lastly, you can set limits per card, so you don't have to deal with some shady merchant billing you without consent or slipping in a hidden charge (it happens alot!).
Hope that helps!
@bolingj lol - yes, that's true - it's not for people doing illegal things but they will do them, and FYI if you are doing something stupid like that then use CASH :D
It's a hard thing to say that I should not trust merchant 1 when you are the middle man in the process that is unknown. I would have to have more trust in your company than PayPal, Stripe, Braintree, etc... or Apple/FireFox/Chrome (not that I have much trust in PayPal mind you..)
If it were launching in China, Iran, Middle East, etc. then I would agree more with you on the privacy stance.... Ultimately your bank doesn't care what you do as long as you pay your bill (hopefully only a portion of the balance and if at all possible paid late)
As for tracking down which merchant did what, the bank, police are going to do that for you - you don't need to worry about it. In general you are covered, bank issues a new card, refunds your money, etc. There is no point knowing it was the car rental place because the employee who stole your card already split or is already in jail once you find out about it from the bank who calls/tests to tell you about a suspicious charge from Cheap'n Easy Car Rental Service Inc. right?
None the less will be interesting to see how this goes. Best of luck to you!
Love this idea of isolating transactions from a security standpoint.
Does this have any impact at all on a user's credit report?
This looks great! I'll definitely try this out. Perhaps you could include burner phone numbers along with this in the future (I want to be able to track how I get signed up for those pesky Telemarketer calls every now and then).
Also, some places require a billing address to go with CC info. I am assuming there is no masking/privacy of that right now?
@sarthakgrover Thanks! You can use any billing info you'd like actually :).
Hi all - Privacy.com co-founder here. I’m super excited to announce that we’re live in the US, after being basically heads-down for the past 20 months.
We’ve been neck-deep on the card issuing side of payments (BIN sponsorship, ACH, processing, AML / KYC), so happy to field any questions on that front.
Give it a try - we'd love to hear your feedback. Thank you!
P.S. Your first $5 donation to watsi.org is on us :)!
@bolingj this looks great. congrats. when can we expect to see this service hitting the UK?
@mrandydavis It's in our long term roadmap, but unfortunately no firm timeframe yet :(.
@bolingj When will you be available in Europe? Will you be SEPA compatible?
@bolingj Congrats on this. I have been waiting on something like this ever since Paypal shutdown their version of it.
I plan to sign up shortly and give it a shot. I hope you guys solved the 1 issue that I have had with the paypal one in ages past is that some sites would see the card as not real or invalid or non-existent. Hopefully you guys got that kink worked out.
P.S. Just finished signing up, I love that your Chase linking happened instantly. The second I hit next, it already had my 2 accounts ready to choose from. Superbly done. I assume you guys are using Plaid? as Yodlee is vastly slower in that department (used to work in a Fintech startup)
@mnisjk @ndyroth @misternicholas @bolingj Hey all, I run www.colorlabcreative.com we are running a campaign where the number one most upvoted product of the day can receive a discounted promo video, is your team interested?
Awesome idea, but do you guys expect any fraud to be the result of this product eventually? Have you guys put up any safeguards to prevent that?
@andreasduess I have, but fraudsters always seem to find a way especially since the main verification I've noticed has to do with your personal information, which is easily attainable if someone tries hard enough.
Another use this would be perfect for is to give individual cc to staff members. We are currently struggling with this issue - our back needs names to be tied to a CC. When people leave, this means that we have to retire old cards and apply for new cards.
@andreasduess I have a similar use case. In our case, we have a single credit card so all transactions must be routed through account dept. We would love to create a card and give it to employees so that they can buy and try new software and services faster.
That's the kind of products that make you smile 5 seconds after landing in the homepage. Few words, 1 illustration and boom: you feel a pain going away. Great job Boling.
@kachchani I concur. The entire onboarding process from sign up through linking a bank account to paying on Watsi is absolutely beautiful.
Any plans on launching in Australia (understanding banking compliance is time consuming and different for each launch market you enter)? Thank you
I've wanted this for so long! How does it work?
I feel like this could also be used to game companies' referral programs, since a lot in the on demand economy use credit card uniqueness to prevent you from earning rewards by referring yourself. (Not endorsing that of course.)
@dfinzer It's pretty simple! You can generate a new card number for every merchant or every transaction. You can do it from our browser extension or directly from your dash.
Definitely true to the second point! We're putting in place things to prevent abuse of promo / rewards systems.
This looks pretty great! It can help reduce anxiety around sharing your CC info on "any" website.
That's why some people actually prefer using PayPal, however with this it seems you can allocate specific funds for purchases.
So I am wondering from a merchant perspective, is there any way to educate users about this?
Signed up but disappointed that, much like all services that tie into bank account, only the large corporate banks are supported. :(
@bentossell Looks very useful.
Doesn't your bank offer a similar service? That's something pretty "standard" in France. Without the browser extension of course..
@gregoiregilbert @bentossell not here in the US - this is pretty much an unheard of concept
@j_nce @gregoiregilbert @bentossell Citi does offer cards where you can generate tons of virtual cards
@gregoiregilbert @bentossell We have similar services in India by banks but they don't work for subscriptions. And it's subscriptions I often forget to cancel! :(
You mention on your site that you have an iOS app available, but don't provide a link to it. I also can't find it via AppStore search since "privacy" is quite generic. Any chance you can link us to it?
@aaroncrocco We mis-timed the App Store approval process 😳, so it's still pending approval by Apple. Hopefully we'll have it live in the app store soon.
Whenever I see a compelling product that depends on my sharing my bank account number I am always disappointed. In a world where database breaches are the norm, having your bank account number shared with numerous startups opens me up to a very costly kind of fraud http://www.nbcnews.com/id/791415... I'm really jelous of the sanity around bank account transaction the european countries enjoy. In the US, incredibly we have zero security around this. Once someone has your account number they can drain your whole bank account.
I first learned of this danger from Donald Knuth's writings here http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.e...
Any plans to add support for using a debit card (even with a fee? I'd be willing to pay)?
It's awesome
Pros:Love the ease of use and security. It’s saved me hundreds of dollars over the years.
Cons:None that I can think of
Hustle X