💾 Archived View for dioskouroi.xyz › thread › 29432683 captured on 2021-12-03 at 14:04:38. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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"You can pay in more places! Our first version of the Privacy Card worked well for creating one-time use cards, setting spend limits, and locking cards to specific merchants. However, some merchant policies prevented our cards from being accepted online. The new version of our Privacy Cards maintains all of the privacy and security features you love while expanding the places where our cards are accepted."
Google was one of those merchants. I've been using this service for a few years now and it has saved me from so many headaches.
Maybe this is an example of "developer brain", but when I see "reissuing all cards", it sounds like when a company has a security incident and resets all passwords at once.
So as I scanned through, my read was "oh, Privacy.com had a security incident", which it did not.
I read it the same way as well, but my reasoning was that vague/generic/neutral headlines tend to be associated with bad news. E.g. Google's "spring cleaning"
Seems like they are changing bank partners and will use cards that code as "charge card" instead of "prepaid card" which is great (some places block "prepaid" cards) but they are forcing this change on everyone (as much as I could see) and doing it with only 30 days of notice, which is much less great.
For reference:
> On December 31, 2021, we will close all Visa Privacy Cards that have not been updated. In order to continue using Privacy.com without interruption, we need you to complete a few simple steps. Visit our FAQs to learn more.
Via the popup transition tool when logging in.
Sad they couldn't keep existing cards open till they expire, but just recently their card expiration dates jumped to lasting till 2027 so I see why.
It looks like they have added a manual payment option, though certainly not preferred, so that they can technically comply with some definition of charge card perhaps?
https://support.privacy.com/hc/en-us/articles/4414521565719-...
Always bugged me when I tried to use a Privacy card on Digital Ocean
I don't blame them, though. DO is a "bill-after" company, so if you racked up server time, they're out that money if you attached a pre-paid card with $0 on it.
We use DO as our provider, and we offer trials in our product offering, so if they attach a prepaid card to _our_ service (which people do, all the time), we're out that money, but it's $5 for us, so we eat it.
I thought DO had an option to prepay via Paypal.
Yes which means you prefund your expenses. If you provide a prepaid card as a funding source it is likely to not have funds when they attempt to debit you for services already rendered. I'm sure they'd be fine with you prepaying on a prepaid card.
They do
Well. I seem to be unable to replace the card I created for a purchase with Affirm using the new cards.
A lot of my use case for Privacy.com was avoiding giving out my debit card (and thus, direct debiting against my checking account). If this switch means it no longer enables that (just replaces a credit card), my usage of them drops quite a bit. It's nice to be able to cap a charge against the card I guess, but the level of effort required doesn't really give me the peace of mind needed to warrant it.
Affirm fully supports the use of virtual cards. You can use the app to generate a new visa card for every purchase.
I did. Multiple cards, multiple times. And got rejected each time. My actual debit card worked fine.
The prior provider cards worked fine; that's what I had entered beforehand. It's just the new ones I reissued on Privacy that aren't being accepted.
I've always been surprised by privacy.com's business model. Do they really make enough money from those small credit card processing fees to stay afloat, or are they coasting on investor money?
So the processing fees (called interchange) are capped at a $0.21+0.05% low rate for most banks, but very small banks and credit unions are exempt from this cap, and charge ~2% similar to credit cards. Fintechs always partner with a small bank to issue their cards and split the revenue.
So the thing is, most of their customers are going to be connecting a debit card from a large bank (they don't allow credit cards as a funding source). A few will come from a Durbin-exempt institution like a small credit union or a community bank (including one issued by another fintech/bank partnership such as Chime). But on the whole, they will mostly be paying the low interchange and charging the high interchange.
Since the new cards are considered credit cards, not debit cards, they won't have to worry about Durbin amendment at all.
I hope they're making enough money. They offer a fantastic service, and they do have paid tiers as well.
I hope the fees keep them afloat, but they are one online service that I wouldn't mind paying a monthly subscription for.
I see the spending limits are still configurable on the new cards.
Does the switch from a pre-paid cards to a charge cards affect the ability for a merchant to collect on balances over the configured limit in some way? Or will those still be declined as it currently is?
We offer virtual cards too through AppBind and when I can’t sleep at night, sometimes I do game plan the possibility of what it means if we had to change card partners.
I expect we will see events like this fairly frequently in the next decade.
I feel for them.
Why not setup a backup system with another provider now?
The numbers would still need to change? The first six (soon to be eight) digits of a Visa or Mastercard identify the card issuer.
Having never heard of privacy.com, I reflexively laughed at the headline. Just me?