8 ms·

I was always bemused about this idea that putting multiple credit cards on a single physical card is some great feature that a lot of people want and would pay

I was always bemused about this idea that putting multiple credit cards on a single physical card is some great feature that a lot of people want and would pay money for. In my experience, having many credit cards is a complete pain to manage, because for each card you need to monitor the statement, set up the automatic payment (or do it manually), change the address when you move, etc, etc, and no sane person is going to want to do that for lots of cards. The fact that it also fills you your wallet is really the least of the problems you'll have. It's nice to have one card as a backup, and some hardcore churners / points collectors are going to want 5 or 6 cards and use different cards for different categories... but they're real niches, it's not something that a mainstream, mass market consumer is going to want to manage.

xKingfisher 10y ago
My dream for something like this is having everything on one card would let you manage the complexity a lot better. Having one single interface to pay all bills and see spending breakdowns aggregated across all your cards, recommending the optimal order to pay down cards (if you are going to carry a balance). Then on top of this, automatic fallback in case one card is declined, new numbers for every online transaction (not tied to a single provider). You could even layer on top a simple scripting language to choose the card to be used for a given transaction. E.g. Use my rewards card when buying gas, but if I've maxed out the points then use the lowest interest card. Or round robin the cards to spread out the balance. Or imagine a group outing where everyone can all combine into a single virtual card, with the ability to distribute charges however you want on the back end. There are a ton of cool possibilities available (albeit very challenging to get right). And in theory, many people have at least 2 cards for redundancy purposes. Add in no fee rewards cards (Target, etc) and it will add up even for non hardcore points collectors.
- huebnerob 10y ago
  This sounds like a genuinely useful technology that will sadly never make it past the Big Credit gods. Card providers seem to make their profits when you're not managing your card usage so intelligently.
- linsomniac 10y ago
  One of the Plastc alternatives, I can't seem to find it now, was a device like Plastc, but also a yearly subscription fee, because they promoted the benefits being that the card would automatically switch between your available cards to optimize rewards. At a gas station you would use the card that had the best gas points. At the grocery store it would switch to the card with the best grocery points... I was never interested in it, because I don't really want to manage many cards, but I can see the appeal in it.
- gkanai 10y ago
  Moneytree does this in Japan. You register all your accounts with it and you can see them all and manage them all in one interface.
- dboreham 10y ago
  Or you could have zero cards given that everyone trots around with a supercomputer in their pants these days..
Cpoll 10y ago
> It's nice to have one card as a backup, and some hardcore churners / points collectors are going to want 5 or 6 cards and use different cards for different categories... but they're real niches, it's not something that a mainstream, mass market consumer is going to want to manage. I don't think this is the case. I think the average person has several credit cards (and is probably in the red on all of them). On the other end of the spectrum is the financial-savvy user that also has multiple credit cards: One that gives them a gas discount, one for their Costco membership, one for restaurant cash-back, one for general purpose cash-back, one that waives the foreign currency conversion fee, etc.
- thaumasiotes 10y ago
  > one that waives the foreign currency conversion fee I have a credit card for precisely this purpose (it's also general-purpose cash back). It's not as useful as you might expect -- most places in China that accept foreign credit cards do so only through an agreement with a chinese bank that imposes a ridiculously disadvantageous exchange rate. (But there's no "conversion fee" -- the bank generously bills you in USD. How nice of them.) They don't seem to be able to bill your card in yuan directly even though the card supports it. On the other hand, my debit card from the same bank that also has no foreign currency conversion fee works perfectly to get cash from ATMs.
  - voltagex_ 10y ago
    >my debit card from the same bank that also has no foreign currency conversion fee I'm assuming they're making money on the exchange rate, then?
    - thaumasiotes 10y ago
      Quite possible, but when I checked it was something like 0.5%, more than an order of magnitude better than the "convenience" of having a chinese bank bill your card in USD. I asked them (my bank) about it, got a response I don't remember, and decided I could live with 0.5%
    - 10y ago
xiaodown 10y ago
So, for reference, I'm a guy who has multiple cards. I have two debit cards and a credit card. The credit card is a credit card (and I mostly use it for company purchases that get reimbursed). The two debit cards correspond to two different checking accounts. I have a "main" checking account that my check gets deposited into, and another account that I use for, mainly, online purchases or recurring subscriptions like netflix or anything where I am worried about card security. I transfer money into the account, then make the purchase, never leaving more than a hundred bucks or so floating in the account. That way, I limit my own pain in the event that someone gets hacked or my card gets leaked online - I'd much rather not be able to pay netflix than not be able to pay rent. At one point, I also had a home depot card when my wife and I were fixing up our house in preparation to sell it. I have a wallet that functions effectively as my phone case and wallet in one, and reducing the number of cards I have to carry around to - potentially - drivers' license, one payment card, and clipper card would be fantastic.
- talmand 10y ago
  If you use your main card at a major retail store it has just as much chance of being involved in a hacking incident as the online card.
- reubensutton 10y ago
  On the London transport network you've been able to pay at the barriers with a contactless credit card in the same way as you would use an Oyster card for a couple of years now. It's weird that other transport networks haven't adopted it yet
  - jahnu 10y ago
    Such a system has been in use in Singapore for more than 15 years. Vienna does away with all of this fuss by simply doing random checks, issuing on the spot fines for fare evaders, and not having to manage the expense of turnstiles etc.
    - srssays 10y ago
egeozcan 10y ago
What I don't understand is the need for multiple credit cards. I have a bank card (an EC-card) and I haven't used my credit-card since a month (other than automatic transactions).
- chrisseaton 10y ago
  Why would you ever use a EC card instead of a credit card? Credit card companies literally pay you to use their cards. Why turn down that money? I carry two credit cards because one is American Express and pays me more but fewer places accept it, so I have a backup Visa that pays me a bit less but everywhere accepts it.
  - Symbiote 10y ago
    ("EC card" implies Germany.) The EU imposes a maximum 0.3% fee to the merchant for accepting a credit card. This is to avoid any unfair competition between cash and cards, and between poorer people not eligible for cards that get cashback. The UK used to have cards giving 2-3% cashback, sometimes more, but they've all been withdrawn. I don't bother with a credit card, since it's one less automatic bill payment and one less statement to check.
    - chrisseaton 10y ago
      You can still get 1.25% back in the EU. It's not a lot, but it's still just free cash. https://www.americanexpress.com/uk/content/platinum-cashback-credit-card/cm/ https://www.americanexpress.com/uk/content/platinum-cashback... I have a card that gets me miles instead of cash. I did the maths and worked out those were better value for what I wanted. Again, they're just free miles and I'm always flying with the airline anyway so I'm never making extra trips in order to spend them. The genius of the system I use is that I have multiple credit cards (American Express, Visa) but actually they all just feed into the same account with the same bill to make managing them simple.
  - MandieD 10y ago
    A lot of merchants, like small hotels and restaurants, in Germany and Austria flat out won't take credit cards, because of the expense. They often will take EC cards and have the chip-and-PIN readers for it. Americans never believe this until they've made a frantic run to an ATM after hosting a big dinner out or when they want to check out of that charming Gasthaus in a ski town. When I first got over here in 2004, Media Markt (large electronics chain) didn't take credit cards, but did take EC-cards.
thaumasiotes 10y ago
> having many credit cards is a complete pain to manage, because for each card you need to [...] change the address when you move Why? I did that once, and it was a huge pain. But the cards work just as well no matter what they think your address of record is. Now I just don't change it.
- defen 10y ago
  So you use your old address as your billing address? Aren't you worried about the new resident of your old address receiving official communications intended for you?
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    In USA, you can file change of address forms with USPS. Any and all financial firms will get that change within a few months, and over that period USPS will forward automatically.
  - thaumasiotes 10y ago
    No, because that is my parents. If I was worried, I'd tell the payment cards to stop sending me mail.
joshvm 10y ago
I have a Curve card, which is essentially this. I paid for the beta and got a free wallet out of it (a nice Tumi one) and £50 in reward points so overall I've actually profited from it. There isn't a monthly charge (yet). Curve is a prepaid Mastercard that acts as a middle man. You spend, it charges whichever card is currently selected. You get extra benefits like zero fees abroad, cash withdrawals, etc. There is also a reward program which is OK if you shop at the places where you get points, but it's no different to signing your card up to a cashback program like Quidco. There are a few big names like Boots, Waterstones and B&Q where I go reasonably often. https://www.imaginecurve.com/curve-rewards-web/ https://www.imaginecurve.com/curve-rewards-web/ The main advantage to me is security. If your card gets stolen, you can revoke it within minutes without worrying about someone having access to your debit card. Because it's linked to the app, you can see immediately when transactions happen. You can do the same with a debit card of course, but it's an added layer of obfuscation. Originally it was supposed to be an amazing loophole for American Express users. You could spend Amex everywhere including on cash withdrawals and rack up points like nobody's business. Then Amex pulled out, so that was a bummer. A lot of people on HeadForPoints got very annoyed and felt like they'd been suckered in. To be fair to Curve, they compensated everyone. I believe you can still use it to withdraw cash on credit cards though, so there's still a way to manufacture points spend. I use mine daily and while it's fine 95% of the time, there have been sporadic occasions where it's been declined. You can't use it at pay-at-pump petrol stations, for instance. It's not reliable enough yet that I can go around with only a single card in my wallet (which sort of ruins the idea of it). It's really useful for traveling abroad though.

xKingfisher 10y ago

My dream for something like this is having everything on one card would let you manage the complexity a lot better. Having one single interface to pay all bills and see spending breakdowns aggregated across all your cards, recommending the optimal order to pay down cards (if you are going to carry a balance). Then on top of this, automatic fallback in case one card is declined, new numbers for every online transaction (not tied to a single provider). You could even layer on top a simple scripting language to choose the card to be used for a given transaction. E.g. Use my rewards card when buying gas, but if I've maxed out the points then use the lowest interest card. Or round robin the cards to spread out the balance. Or imagine a group outing where everyone can all combine into a single virtual card, with the ability to distribute charges however you want on the back end. There are a ton of cool possibilities available (albeit very challenging to get right). And in theory, many people have at least 2 cards for redundancy purposes. Add in no fee rewards cards (Target, etc) and it will add up even for non hardcore points collectors.

huebnerob 10y ago
This sounds like a genuinely useful technology that will sadly never make it past the Big Credit gods. Card providers seem to make their profits when you're not managing your card usage so intelligently.
linsomniac 10y ago
One of the Plastc alternatives, I can't seem to find it now, was a device like Plastc, but also a yearly subscription fee, because they promoted the benefits being that the card would automatically switch between your available cards to optimize rewards. At a gas station you would use the card that had the best gas points. At the grocery store it would switch to the card with the best grocery points... I was never interested in it, because I don't really want to manage many cards, but I can see the appeal in it.
gkanai 10y ago
Moneytree does this in Japan. You register all your accounts with it and you can see them all and manage them all in one interface.
dboreham 10y ago
Or you could have zero cards given that everyone trots around with a supercomputer in their pants these days..

Cpoll 10y ago

> It's nice to have one card as a backup, and some hardcore churners / points collectors are going to want 5 or 6 cards and use different cards for different categories... but they're real niches, it's not something that a mainstream, mass market consumer is going to want to manage. I don't think this is the case. I think the average person has several credit cards (and is probably in the red on all of them). On the other end of the spectrum is the financial-savvy user that also has multiple credit cards: One that gives them a gas discount, one for their Costco membership, one for restaurant cash-back, one for general purpose cash-back, one that waives the foreign currency conversion fee, etc.

thaumasiotes 10y ago
> one that waives the foreign currency conversion fee I have a credit card for precisely this purpose (it's also general-purpose cash back). It's not as useful as you might expect -- most places in China that accept foreign credit cards do so only through an agreement with a chinese bank that imposes a ridiculously disadvantageous exchange rate. (But there's no "conversion fee" -- the bank generously bills you in USD. How nice of them.) They don't seem to be able to bill your card in yuan directly even though the card supports it. On the other hand, my debit card from the same bank that also has no foreign currency conversion fee works perfectly to get cash from ATMs.
- voltagex_ 10y ago
  >my debit card from the same bank that also has no foreign currency conversion fee I'm assuming they're making money on the exchange rate, then?
  - thaumasiotes 10y ago
    Quite possible, but when I checked it was something like 0.5%, more than an order of magnitude better than the "convenience" of having a chinese bank bill your card in USD. I asked them (my bank) about it, got a response I don't remember, and decided I could live with 0.5%
  - 10y ago

xiaodown 10y ago

So, for reference, I'm a guy who has multiple cards. I have two debit cards and a credit card. The credit card is a credit card (and I mostly use it for company purchases that get reimbursed). The two debit cards correspond to two different checking accounts. I have a "main" checking account that my check gets deposited into, and another account that I use for, mainly, online purchases or recurring subscriptions like netflix or anything where I am worried about card security. I transfer money into the account, then make the purchase, never leaving more than a hundred bucks or so floating in the account. That way, I limit my own pain in the event that someone gets hacked or my card gets leaked online - I'd much rather not be able to pay netflix than not be able to pay rent. At one point, I also had a home depot card when my wife and I were fixing up our house in preparation to sell it. I have a wallet that functions effectively as my phone case and wallet in one, and reducing the number of cards I have to carry around to - potentially - drivers' license, one payment card, and clipper card would be fantastic.

talmand 10y ago
If you use your main card at a major retail store it has just as much chance of being involved in a hacking incident as the online card.
reubensutton 10y ago
On the London transport network you've been able to pay at the barriers with a contactless credit card in the same way as you would use an Oyster card for a couple of years now. It's weird that other transport networks haven't adopted it yet
- jahnu 10y ago
  Such a system has been in use in Singapore for more than 15 years. Vienna does away with all of this fuss by simply doing random checks, issuing on the spot fines for fare evaders, and not having to manage the expense of turnstiles etc.
  - srssays 10y ago

egeozcan 10y ago

What I don't understand is the need for multiple credit cards. I have a bank card (an EC-card) and I haven't used my credit-card since a month (other than automatic transactions).

chrisseaton 10y ago
Why would you ever use a EC card instead of a credit card? Credit card companies literally pay you to use their cards. Why turn down that money? I carry two credit cards because one is American Express and pays me more but fewer places accept it, so I have a backup Visa that pays me a bit less but everywhere accepts it.
- Symbiote 10y ago
  ("EC card" implies Germany.) The EU imposes a maximum 0.3% fee to the merchant for accepting a credit card. This is to avoid any unfair competition between cash and cards, and between poorer people not eligible for cards that get cashback. The UK used to have cards giving 2-3% cashback, sometimes more, but they've all been withdrawn. I don't bother with a credit card, since it's one less automatic bill payment and one less statement to check.
  - chrisseaton 10y ago
    You can still get 1.25% back in the EU. It's not a lot, but it's still just free cash. https://www.americanexpress.com/uk/content/platinum-cashback-credit-card/cm/ https://www.americanexpress.com/uk/content/platinum-cashback... I have a card that gets me miles instead of cash. I did the maths and worked out those were better value for what I wanted. Again, they're just free miles and I'm always flying with the airline anyway so I'm never making extra trips in order to spend them. The genius of the system I use is that I have multiple credit cards (American Express, Visa) but actually they all just feed into the same account with the same bill to make managing them simple.
- MandieD 10y ago
  A lot of merchants, like small hotels and restaurants, in Germany and Austria flat out won't take credit cards, because of the expense. They often will take EC cards and have the chip-and-PIN readers for it. Americans never believe this until they've made a frantic run to an ATM after hosting a big dinner out or when they want to check out of that charming Gasthaus in a ski town. When I first got over here in 2004, Media Markt (large electronics chain) didn't take credit cards, but did take EC-cards.

thaumasiotes 10y ago

> having many credit cards is a complete pain to manage, because for each card you need to [...] change the address when you move Why? I did that once, and it was a huge pain. But the cards work just as well no matter what they think your address of record is. Now I just don't change it.

defen 10y ago
So you use your old address as your billing address? Aren't you worried about the new resident of your old address receiving official communications intended for you?
- jessaustin 10y ago
  In USA, you can file change of address forms with USPS. Any and all financial firms will get that change within a few months, and over that period USPS will forward automatically.
- thaumasiotes 10y ago
  No, because that is my parents. If I was worried, I'd tell the payment cards to stop sending me mail.

joshvm 10y ago

I have a Curve card, which is essentially this. I paid for the beta and got a free wallet out of it (a nice Tumi one) and £50 in reward points so overall I've actually profited from it. There isn't a monthly charge (yet). Curve is a prepaid Mastercard that acts as a middle man. You spend, it charges whichever card is currently selected. You get extra benefits like zero fees abroad, cash withdrawals, etc. There is also a reward program which is OK if you shop at the places where you get points, but it's no different to signing your card up to a cashback program like Quidco. There are a few big names like Boots, Waterstones and B&Q where I go reasonably often. https://www.imaginecurve.com/curve-rewards-web/ https://www.imaginecurve.com/curve-rewards-web/ The main advantage to me is security. If your card gets stolen, you can revoke it within minutes without worrying about someone having access to your debit card. Because it's linked to the app, you can see immediately when transactions happen. You can do the same with a debit card of course, but it's an added layer of obfuscation. Originally it was supposed to be an amazing loophole for American Express users. You could spend Amex everywhere including on cash withdrawals and rack up points like nobody's business. Then Amex pulled out, so that was a bummer. A lot of people on HeadForPoints got very annoyed and felt like they'd been suckered in. To be fair to Curve, they compensated everyone. I believe you can still use it to withdraw cash on credit cards though, so there's still a way to manufacture points spend. I use mine daily and while it's fine 95% of the time, there have been sporadic occasions where it's been declined. You can't use it at pay-at-pump petrol stations, for instance. It's not reliable enough yet that I can go around with only a single card in my wallet (which sort of ruins the idea of it). It's really useful for traveling abroad though.