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Privacy.com Reissuing All Cards

kf6nux 5y ago
I'm surprised I'm hearing about it here before getting an email from them.
- CryptoBanker 5y ago
  They never sent any kind of notification. I found out when I started getting payments declined and emails threatening to suspend services
- regulatorynerd 5y ago
  Thanks for using the product -- head of legal and compliance here. Emails are going out in phases. But if you log into your dashboard, you should be prompted to accept the new terms and re-issue any merchant locked cards. Some folks will already be on the new product if they signed up during our public beta period, so if you don't hear from us you're likely already on the new card types.
  - AdamJacobMuller 5y ago
    > Emails are going out in phases. But if you log into your dashboard, you should be prompted to accept the new terms and re-issue any merchant locked cards. I love your service, but, sorry, this was just a huge miss. You guys completely goofed on the messaging of this.
  - mvaspat 5y ago
    Haven’t heard of you in my Inbox, but singing into my account see all cards marked with a clock icon, see also the Get Started button to new Privacy Cards. It’s confusing, at least I should have received a darn email, right?, maybe it’s cause I’m a free tier member? haven’t been in any privacy.com public beta program. Can’t imagine privacy.com actions towards its users when shit hits the fan for real. Better to leave sooner than later.
  - kf6nux 5y ago
    Thanks for engaging here. Unfortunately, everything is on autopay. I rarely access the app or browser extension, and almost never access the dashboard. I hope folks over there are thinking about how many people will have fewer than 30 days to update their cards. Emails should have gone out much sooner. I'm guessing this was a rushed job, and I'm sympathetic toward the things vendors force on companies, but communication is 100% in a company's control and should have gone out much sooner (I still haven't received an email).
  - 1shooner 5y ago
    This is a serious failure of communication.
  - garrettjoecox 5y ago
    Why would emails warning of basic service cutoff be going out in phases if every customer has the same deadline? I’m finding out about this today from word of mouth, have 50+ cards and less than a month to react, still not a single email or notification from the mobile app to warn me.
ssalka 5y ago
I had been using privacy.com for around 6 months to pay my Xfinity internet bill. Last month, it stopped working randomly. I wonder if this change will fix my issue.
ctdean 5y ago
Is this just the downstream effect of Visa’s decoupled debit rules ? https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/about-visa/visa-rules-public.pdf https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/about-visa/visa-rules... I know this is not allowed in the USA.
rootsudo 5y ago
So changing the BIN basically forces this reissue.
AdamJacobMuller 5y ago
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.
- m0ngr31 5y ago
  Always bugged me when I tried to use a Privacy card on Digital Ocean
  - donmcronald 5y ago
    I thought DO had an option to prepay via Paypal.
    - ipaddr 5y ago
      They do
    - singlow 5y ago
      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.
    - dylan604 5y ago
      If you're trying to use something like Privacy.com, it's probably because you don't want to have your details shared with others. Using PayPal is not going to to that.
  - julianlam 5y ago
    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.
xd1936 5y ago
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?
- jaywalk 5y ago
  I hope they're making enough money. They offer a fantastic service, and they do have paid tiers as well.
- AlbertCory 5y ago
  I hope the fees keep them afloat, but they are one online service that I wouldn't mind paying a monthly subscription for.
- morpheuskafka 5y ago
  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.
  - hobo_mark 5y ago
    I recognize another patio11 connoisseur.
sunir 5y ago
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.
- troydavis 5y ago
  The problem isn't needing to change card partners, it's not having (not having negotiated?) a 1+ year period where already-issued cards will continue to work. Having a year or more to gradually change cards the next time I buy something from each merchant would be a minor inconvenience. In the best case, it would be 2+ years and by then, it would hardly be a concern at all. Privacy.com's mistake wasn't needing to change issuers; as you said, that's unavoidable. Rather, it was forcing customers to cut over existing cards in 3 weeks, then lying to customers by pretending this was an upgrade rather than something required by their issuer.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  Why not setup a backup system with another provider now?
  - pxx 5y ago
    The numbers would still need to change? The first six (soon to be eight) digits of a Visa or Mastercard identify the card issuer.
jrm4 5y ago
Having never heard of privacy.com, I reflexively laughed at the headline. Just me?
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  Sorry, I don't follow but feel like I should. At the risk of dissecting the frog[0], could you possibly explain? [0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/440683-explaining-a-joke-is-like-dissecting-a-frog-you-understand https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/440683-explaining-a-joke-is...
niij 5y ago
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?
lostcolony 5y ago
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.
- malfist 5y ago
  Affirm fully supports the use of virtual cards. You can use the app to generate a new visa card for every purchase.
  - lostcolony 5y ago
    I did. Multiple cards, multiple times. And got rejected each time. My actual debit card worked fine. The prior Privacy 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.
    - malfist 5y ago
      Oh I see, you're talking about linking your affirm account to a debit card for payments? They might be being rejected because they fall into a high fraud category.
      - lostcolony 5y ago
        No. I'm saying in Affirm, the only options for payment are ACH cards, and debit cards. I don't like either of those, so previously I used Privacy.com cards. Yes, that meant Privacy.com had access to my bank/debit card details, but they already did (and in general it means one place has my debit cards, rather than every place that eschews credit cards). Affirm previously accepted cards created with Privacy.com just fine. However, to prepare for the old cards no longer working (per the article), I just went and had new ones issued on Privacy.com. When I went to put those into Affirm, though, Affirm rejected them with "something went wrong". Multiple cards, multiple attempts, no further data given (both on the site and in the network request). When I went "uh-oh; I need to actually make sure the Affirm loan gets paid off next month when it goes to bill again", and so inserted my bank's debit card details, it went through fine. So, Affirm rejected the new Privacy.com cards for me. It accepted my personal debit card just fine.
jamestimmins 5y ago
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.
- wolpoli 5y ago
  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"
- junon 5y ago
  To be clear to anyone who's reading along here instead of the site, they're reissuing cards because they are changing the way their card issuance works in order to improve merchant compatibility (which is definitely needed). As such they have to use, presumably, a different set of card numbers/prefixes/whatever that the card issuers dictate. No security incident prompted this.
  - epa 5y ago
    Typically privacy.com cards showed up as a prepaid card, and most merchants online block these. Curious to see how it improves acceptance rates.
    - mdesimone2 5y ago
      Curious, why do most merchants reject those? How do they impose more risk to the merchant?
      - judge2020 5y ago
        For post-paid things like cloud offerings, prepaid cards are much easier to get compared to debit/credit, so you end up with a lot more fake accounts that just run malware/use hundreds of dollars in resources in a month only to have that card decline after the money on the prepaid is already spent somewhere else.
ibdf 5y ago
"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.
- chillwaves 5y ago
  I liked the idea and always wanted to use it more. I actually only used it once because I was dealing with a potential subscription hassle and that card actually got stolen! A bad charge was reported from privacy.com (and of course did not go through). Pretty cool service.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Kye 5y ago
It says something about a helper tool, but I don't see it in my dashboard.
- UnlockedSecrets 5y ago
  It is located at privacy.com/reissue
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
gonehome 5y ago
Does anyone on HN have experience with this service or a personal comparison with Blur? I’ve used delete me which works well enough (from the people that make Blur), but I’ve ended up just using the Apple Card which has a tiny amount of the privacy guarantees without a lot of the hassle (and good software). I’ve been tempted to switch to one of these services though, but I think your data still gets resold by the card processor?
- junon 5y ago
  Never heard of Blur, but I've used Privacy.com successfully for... man, maybe five years? Never had any issues with them. Not one. They always Just Work, their app doesn't change every six months, I hardly ever have to log in. Everything 'Just Works'. They've been great. The card reset is a tad unfortunate but isn't really an issue since they're all named/branded accordingly.
  - zhynn 5y ago
    Adding my voice to this experience. I have been a user for about 2 years, and I love it. I also appreciate that they support non-txt 2fa for login security. My only quibble is that I wish I could generate a card that I could give to a someone else that had a limit cap but could be used at more than one site/vendor (the current method really wants you to use them at only a single vendor, which is generally exactly what I want). Like an allowance card basically.
- mattnewton 5y ago
  Privacy.com has been fantastic for me - AMA. However I am such a heavy user that this announcement is actually rather annoying. I didn't see an email about it yet either, and could have easily missed that I am going to need to update 10 or so subscriptions this month :/
  - octopoc 5y ago
    Can you hook Privacy.com up to a budgeting app that uses e.g. Plaid or Finicity to monitor transactions?
FalconSensei 5y ago
After moving to Canada, I definitely miss that in Brazil I could just create a one-time card number directly from my bank site, instead of having to rely on 3rd parties that sometimes don't even offer the same service - Canadian privacy.com alternatives seem to offer a pre-paid card, but no 1 time card numbers.
chuckdotis 5y ago
I got this message last night. I started the process to reissue the cards, but I was immediately asked to provide my social security number. Privacy.com already has my bank account number and routing details, but TBH I'm not super comfortable providing even more personal info such as my SSN. Privacy.com has been an amazing service, and although I'll likely cave to their request for my SSN, I'm not all that happy about it.
- chaikasumu 5y ago
  Maybe it's because you have your funding source as your bank account, but I was never asked to provide my SSN with a debit card funding source.
  - chuckdotis 5y ago
    > Maybe it's because you have your funding source as your bank account I originally had it tied to a debit card, but for some reason Privacy.com forced me to provide a bank account about a year after I started it. I asked support why and they couldn't give me a good answer other than my credit union is no longer supported (though I think the agent I spoke with was blowing smoke and it might have had something to do with my always-on VPN). Have you been asked to provide an SSN with the latest change?
- aaomidi 5y ago
  If it makes you feel better, your SSN is dumped into thousands of leaks already, most likely.
  - chuckdotis 5y ago
    > If it makes you feel better, your SSN is dumped into thousands of leaks already, most likely. Actually, this reminder does make me feel slightly better about giving my SSN to Privacy.com.
    - aaomidi 5y ago
      Yeah at this point I assume my SSN is more of a UID username that isn't just fully-public, but I need to monitor credit and be pro-active about it, rather than some secret value.
slg 5y ago
Can anyone figure out a reason why issuing new cards would require a new terms and conditions or is this Privacy.com just using this as an excuse to force users to accept new and presumably worse T&C (if they aren't marketing the changes then it is a safe assumption the changes aren't pro-user)?
- regulatorynerd 5y ago
  Hi -- head of legal and compliance for Privacy.com. tl;dr is US consumer card types have lots of rules and laws attached, and we needed to have folks accept some new terms before we could give you all access to the new card types. Thanks for using our service!
  - slg 5y ago
    So it sounds like the TL;DR is that Privacy.com is getting less private as the new terms allow you collect more user data.
ghshephard 5y ago
I loved the idea about privacy.com - used them for a while - but a significant (>40%?) of the vendors that I tried to use them with didn't accept pre-paid cards (which I guess what these appear as) - and almost 90% of the vendors that I really needed them for would not accept them. Perhaps this re-issue will make them more useful - here's hoping, because I think the idea is brilliant.
- AdamJacobMuller 5y ago
  I found the opposite, oddly, only a tiny % of vendors wouldn't accept prepaid cards. I do agree it was all services where I REALLY wanted to use privacy. That said, the only great thing about this, is that the new cards are re-classed as "charge card" and not "prepaid" card, so, they fixed it! If only they did it with more than 30 days notice I would have been ecstatic.
mnisjk2 5y ago
Hi all - I’m one of the founders at Privacy. I’d like to provide more context on why we’re asking customers to reissue cards. In an attempt to stay current with changes in card network and bank requirements, we spent the better part of this year investigating product adjustments and determined that changing our cards from prepaid debit to charge cards is the best option to preserve the customer experience. I recognize reissuing cards can be a pretty big inconvenience - this isn’t a decision we took lightly. The silver lining is that this should improve merchant acceptance and provide a better overall customer experience. Functionally, cards will continue to operate exactly as they always have - no fees, no interest, no selling of your data, and no impact to your credit score.
- d3d1rty 5y ago
  This is a huge inconvenience, and dressing it up as an "Exciting Update" is Orwellian. I was a paying subscriber, but I'll be cancelling my subscription now.
- Kye 5y ago
  Is this rolling out slowly, or did I join after this was already implemented for new cards? I see no cards on privacy.com/reissue and haven't gotten any notifications. I signed up in October.
  - rachel_lithic 5y ago
    We rolled this product out to new users in early October, so it's possible you signed up after that change and have been issuing the new card type. Reach out to our team at support@privacy.com and we'll be happy to take a look at your account and confirm.
    - Kye 5y ago
      They confirmed I signed up with the new thing. Thanks. You might want to add an FAQ entry to cover the situation where someone finds out about the change but doesn't know if it applies to them.
- 5y ago
therein 5y ago
I had created an account with them right away when they first started, had given them all my information as they required. After a month or so they closed my account due to abuse. All I was doing was to use their service as intended.
- auslegung 5y ago
  I’m not associated with Privacy in anyway. I’ve had a couple of inconvenient things happened to my account, I can’t remember the details right now, but in interacting with their customer support I got the sense that it was algorithms that weren’t tuned correctly yet. That may be what happened with you?
spooneybarger 5y ago
As a fairly active user, I'm extremely irritated with this being how I am finding out about this change. Wrapping up something that amounts to extra work for me in bubbly language is kind of infuriating but in keeping with a couple of my experiences with them. I'm not sure if I'll continue as a user given my existing unease with how I feel their existing pitch and documentation are misleading. I appreciate the service but I'm not sure it's worth it to me to switch the cards I have given the my other experiences.
- d3d1rty 5y ago
  Totally agree, especially about the bubbly language used to dress up what is almost certainly a major inconvenience. I've been using their service for years, but if I have to change all of the cards that I have on file everywhere, I might as well just put in my CC details and get the cashback/points.
password4321 5y ago
Maybe time to check out OneFinance for multi-card/ACH https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28247788#28248539 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28247788#28248539
peanut_worm 5y ago
Seems weird to label a massive inconvenience as an “Exciting Update”
orliesaurus 5y ago
Never found a good alternative to privacy.com, so far their service has always been top notch... But now I am curious: who else is out there doing what Privacy.com does, similarly or better?
- nyuszika7h 5y ago
  Revolut has disposable cards but those are not exactly the same, because they always get destroyed after one payment rather than being able to keep using it for one merchant. Also on the free plan you can only have one normal and one disposable card active at a time.
northerdome 5y ago
Any chance going through the process of updating all my cards could earn a Cashback key? :)
jrochkind1 5y ago
This has always seemed like a very attractive service to me, although I haven't signed up for it myself. While some normal credit cards theoretically offer temporary/limited cards as a service, the software/support is so bad I've never been able to make it work with my existing cards. Have HN'ers (without any financial relationships to the company!) used it? Any reviews? Any downsides?
- auslegung 5y ago
  I’ve been using the free tier for about two years and love it. I’m not associated in any way. It works flawlessly, just as long as the merchant accepts prepaid debit cards. I’ve created hundreds of privacy cards and have only had a couple of merchants not accept them. As a side note, the integration with 1password (whom I have worked for but no longer) is just :chef_kiss: You can create a privacy card from the merchant’s checking form and it gets saved in 1Password.
efitz 5y ago
I was a paying Privacy customer in the past; I’m only a free customer now because you give too much functionality in the free tier plan and because of the occasional incompatibility with some merchants. I normally immediately end my relationships with companies that make a change that invalidates all the effort that I have already put into the company. Why? You just zeroed my sunk cost and made the cost of switching vs cost of staying the same. I would like to stay with Privacy but I really want some assurance that you’re not going to do it again.
klinquist 5y ago
It seems privacy started issuing these "better" cards... a year ago? Maybe slightly less? I had a bunch of privacy.com cards expire (original customer here) and had to re-generate them. Those cards that I re-generated didn't need to be re-generated again this time.
bhaney 5y ago
I can understand needing to comply with updated KYC requirements from a bank partner, but I'm not really experiencing the "improved merchant acceptance" so far. The very first card that Privacy.com recommended I replace was the card I have for paying my Spectrum bill, which Spectrum is obviously already accepting. Privacy.com even linked me straight to Spectrum's billing page to replace the old card with the new "improved acceptance" card. Imagine my surprise when Spectrum rejects the new card with "Prepaid and gift cards are ineligible" EDIT: I regenerated the card again and Spectrum accepted it no problem. No idea what happened there. Maybe there was something funky with that particular card number, or maybe I mistyped the previous number? Either way, it's working now and I've had no problem with the rest of my card replacements so far (though it has certainly been a bit of a slog).
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  ... Oh. I just posted a thank-you to Privacy, because I assumed it fixed this problem. I guess I'll edit it. That's unfortunate.

I'm surprised I'm hearing about it here before getting an email from them.

CryptoBanker 5y ago
They never sent any kind of notification. I found out when I started getting payments declined and emails threatening to suspend services
regulatorynerd 5y ago
Thanks for using the product -- head of legal and compliance here. Emails are going out in phases. But if you log into your dashboard, you should be prompted to accept the new terms and re-issue any merchant locked cards. Some folks will already be on the new product if they signed up during our public beta period, so if you don't hear from us you're likely already on the new card types.
- AdamJacobMuller 5y ago
  > Emails are going out in phases. But if you log into your dashboard, you should be prompted to accept the new terms and re-issue any merchant locked cards. I love your service, but, sorry, this was just a huge miss. You guys completely goofed on the messaging of this.
- mvaspat 5y ago
  Haven’t heard of you in my Inbox, but singing into my account see all cards marked with a clock icon, see also the Get Started button to new Privacy Cards. It’s confusing, at least I should have received a darn email, right?, maybe it’s cause I’m a free tier member? haven’t been in any privacy.com public beta program. Can’t imagine privacy.com actions towards its users when shit hits the fan for real. Better to leave sooner than later.
- kf6nux 5y ago
  Thanks for engaging here. Unfortunately, everything is on autopay. I rarely access the app or browser extension, and almost never access the dashboard. I hope folks over there are thinking about how many people will have fewer than 30 days to update their cards. Emails should have gone out much sooner. I'm guessing this was a rushed job, and I'm sympathetic toward the things vendors force on companies, but communication is 100% in a company's control and should have gone out much sooner (I still haven't received an email).
- 1shooner 5y ago
  This is a serious failure of communication.
- garrettjoecox 5y ago
  Why would emails warning of basic service cutoff be going out in phases if every customer has the same deadline? I’m finding out about this today from word of mouth, have 50+ cards and less than a month to react, still not a single email or notification from the mobile app to warn me.

I had been using privacy.com for around 6 months to pay my Xfinity internet bill. Last month, it stopped working randomly. I wonder if this change will fix my issue.

ctdean 5y ago

Is this just the downstream effect of Visa’s decoupled debit rules ? https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/about-visa/visa-rules-public.pdf https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/about-visa/visa-rules... I know this is not allowed in the USA.

rootsudo 5y ago

So changing the BIN basically forces this reissue.

AdamJacobMuller 5y ago

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.

m0ngr31 5y ago
Always bugged me when I tried to use a Privacy card on Digital Ocean
- donmcronald 5y ago
  I thought DO had an option to prepay via Paypal.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    They do
  - singlow 5y ago
    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.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    If you're trying to use something like Privacy.com, it's probably because you don't want to have your details shared with others. Using PayPal is not going to to that.
- julianlam 5y ago
  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.

xd1936 5y ago

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?

jaywalk 5y ago
I hope they're making enough money. They offer a fantastic service, and they do have paid tiers as well.
AlbertCory 5y ago
I hope the fees keep them afloat, but they are one online service that I wouldn't mind paying a monthly subscription for.
morpheuskafka 5y ago
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.
- hobo_mark 5y ago
  I recognize another patio11 connoisseur.

sunir 5y ago

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.

troydavis 5y ago
The problem isn't needing to change card partners, it's not having (not having negotiated?) a 1+ year period where already-issued cards will continue to work. Having a year or more to gradually change cards the next time I buy something from each merchant would be a minor inconvenience. In the best case, it would be 2+ years and by then, it would hardly be a concern at all. Privacy.com's mistake wasn't needing to change issuers; as you said, that's unavoidable. Rather, it was forcing customers to cut over existing cards in 3 weeks, then lying to customers by pretending this was an upgrade rather than something required by their issuer.
ipaddr 5y ago
Why not setup a backup system with another provider now?
- pxx 5y ago
  The numbers would still need to change? The first six (soon to be eight) digits of a Visa or Mastercard identify the card issuer.

jrm4 5y ago

Having never heard of privacy.com, I reflexively laughed at the headline. Just me?

yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
Sorry, I don't follow but feel like I should. At the risk of dissecting the frog[0], could you possibly explain? [0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/440683-explaining-a-joke-is-like-dissecting-a-frog-you-understand https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/440683-explaining-a-joke-is...

niij 5y ago

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?

lostcolony 5y ago

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.

malfist 5y ago
Affirm fully supports the use of virtual cards. You can use the app to generate a new visa card for every purchase.
- lostcolony 5y ago
  I did. Multiple cards, multiple times. And got rejected each time. My actual debit card worked fine. The prior Privacy 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.
  - malfist 5y ago
    Oh I see, you're talking about linking your affirm account to a debit card for payments? They might be being rejected because they fall into a high fraud category.
    - lostcolony 5y ago
      No. I'm saying in Affirm, the only options for payment are ACH cards, and debit cards. I don't like either of those, so previously I used Privacy.com cards. Yes, that meant Privacy.com had access to my bank/debit card details, but they already did (and in general it means one place has my debit cards, rather than every place that eschews credit cards). Affirm previously accepted cards created with Privacy.com just fine. However, to prepare for the old cards no longer working (per the article), I just went and had new ones issued on Privacy.com. When I went to put those into Affirm, though, Affirm rejected them with "something went wrong". Multiple cards, multiple attempts, no further data given (both on the site and in the network request). When I went "uh-oh; I need to actually make sure the Affirm loan gets paid off next month when it goes to bill again", and so inserted my bank's debit card details, it went through fine. So, Affirm rejected the new Privacy.com cards for me. It accepted my personal debit card just fine.

jamestimmins 5y ago

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.

wolpoli 5y ago
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"
junon 5y ago
To be clear to anyone who's reading along here instead of the site, they're reissuing cards because they are changing the way their card issuance works in order to improve merchant compatibility (which is definitely needed). As such they have to use, presumably, a different set of card numbers/prefixes/whatever that the card issuers dictate. No security incident prompted this.
- epa 5y ago
  Typically privacy.com cards showed up as a prepaid card, and most merchants online block these. Curious to see how it improves acceptance rates.
  - mdesimone2 5y ago
    Curious, why do most merchants reject those? How do they impose more risk to the merchant?
    - judge2020 5y ago
      For post-paid things like cloud offerings, prepaid cards are much easier to get compared to debit/credit, so you end up with a lot more fake accounts that just run malware/use hundreds of dollars in resources in a month only to have that card decline after the money on the prepaid is already spent somewhere else.

ibdf 5y ago

"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.

chillwaves 5y ago
I liked the idea and always wanted to use it more. I actually only used it once because I was dealing with a potential subscription hassle and that card actually got stolen! A bad charge was reported from privacy.com (and of course did not go through). Pretty cool service.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Kye 5y ago

It says something about a helper tool, but I don't see it in my dashboard.

UnlockedSecrets 5y ago
It is located at privacy.com/reissue
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

gonehome 5y ago

Does anyone on HN have experience with this service or a personal comparison with Blur? I’ve used delete me which works well enough (from the people that make Blur), but I’ve ended up just using the Apple Card which has a tiny amount of the privacy guarantees without a lot of the hassle (and good software). I’ve been tempted to switch to one of these services though, but I think your data still gets resold by the card processor?

junon 5y ago
Never heard of Blur, but I've used Privacy.com successfully for... man, maybe five years? Never had any issues with them. Not one. They always Just Work, their app doesn't change every six months, I hardly ever have to log in. Everything 'Just Works'. They've been great. The card reset is a tad unfortunate but isn't really an issue since they're all named/branded accordingly.
- zhynn 5y ago
  Adding my voice to this experience. I have been a user for about 2 years, and I love it. I also appreciate that they support non-txt 2fa for login security. My only quibble is that I wish I could generate a card that I could give to a someone else that had a limit cap but could be used at more than one site/vendor (the current method really wants you to use them at only a single vendor, which is generally exactly what I want). Like an allowance card basically.
mattnewton 5y ago
Privacy.com has been fantastic for me - AMA. However I am such a heavy user that this announcement is actually rather annoying. I didn't see an email about it yet either, and could have easily missed that I am going to need to update 10 or so subscriptions this month :/
- octopoc 5y ago
  Can you hook Privacy.com up to a budgeting app that uses e.g. Plaid or Finicity to monitor transactions?

FalconSensei 5y ago

After moving to Canada, I definitely miss that in Brazil I could just create a one-time card number directly from my bank site, instead of having to rely on 3rd parties that sometimes don't even offer the same service - Canadian privacy.com alternatives seem to offer a pre-paid card, but no 1 time card numbers.

chuckdotis 5y ago

I got this message last night. I started the process to reissue the cards, but I was immediately asked to provide my social security number. Privacy.com already has my bank account number and routing details, but TBH I'm not super comfortable providing even more personal info such as my SSN. Privacy.com has been an amazing service, and although I'll likely cave to their request for my SSN, I'm not all that happy about it.

chaikasumu 5y ago
Maybe it's because you have your funding source as your bank account, but I was never asked to provide my SSN with a debit card funding source.
- chuckdotis 5y ago
  > Maybe it's because you have your funding source as your bank account I originally had it tied to a debit card, but for some reason Privacy.com forced me to provide a bank account about a year after I started it. I asked support why and they couldn't give me a good answer other than my credit union is no longer supported (though I think the agent I spoke with was blowing smoke and it might have had something to do with my always-on VPN). Have you been asked to provide an SSN with the latest change?
aaomidi 5y ago
If it makes you feel better, your SSN is dumped into thousands of leaks already, most likely.
- chuckdotis 5y ago
  > If it makes you feel better, your SSN is dumped into thousands of leaks already, most likely. Actually, this reminder does make me feel slightly better about giving my SSN to Privacy.com.
  - aaomidi 5y ago
    Yeah at this point I assume my SSN is more of a UID username that isn't just fully-public, but I need to monitor credit and be pro-active about it, rather than some secret value.

slg 5y ago

Can anyone figure out a reason why issuing new cards would require a new terms and conditions or is this Privacy.com just using this as an excuse to force users to accept new and presumably worse T&C (if they aren't marketing the changes then it is a safe assumption the changes aren't pro-user)?

regulatorynerd 5y ago
Hi -- head of legal and compliance for Privacy.com. tl;dr is US consumer card types have lots of rules and laws attached, and we needed to have folks accept some new terms before we could give you all access to the new card types. Thanks for using our service!
- slg 5y ago
  So it sounds like the TL;DR is that Privacy.com is getting less private as the new terms allow you collect more user data.

ghshephard 5y ago

I loved the idea about privacy.com - used them for a while - but a significant (>40%?) of the vendors that I tried to use them with didn't accept pre-paid cards (which I guess what these appear as) - and almost 90% of the vendors that I really needed them for would not accept them. Perhaps this re-issue will make them more useful - here's hoping, because I think the idea is brilliant.

AdamJacobMuller 5y ago
I found the opposite, oddly, only a tiny % of vendors wouldn't accept prepaid cards. I do agree it was all services where I REALLY wanted to use privacy. That said, the only great thing about this, is that the new cards are re-classed as "charge card" and not "prepaid" card, so, they fixed it! If only they did it with more than 30 days notice I would have been ecstatic.

mnisjk2 5y ago

Hi all - I’m one of the founders at Privacy. I’d like to provide more context on why we’re asking customers to reissue cards. In an attempt to stay current with changes in card network and bank requirements, we spent the better part of this year investigating product adjustments and determined that changing our cards from prepaid debit to charge cards is the best option to preserve the customer experience. I recognize reissuing cards can be a pretty big inconvenience - this isn’t a decision we took lightly. The silver lining is that this should improve merchant acceptance and provide a better overall customer experience. Functionally, cards will continue to operate exactly as they always have - no fees, no interest, no selling of your data, and no impact to your credit score.

d3d1rty 5y ago
This is a huge inconvenience, and dressing it up as an "Exciting Update" is Orwellian. I was a paying subscriber, but I'll be cancelling my subscription now.
Kye 5y ago
Is this rolling out slowly, or did I join after this was already implemented for new cards? I see no cards on privacy.com/reissue and haven't gotten any notifications. I signed up in October.
- rachel_lithic 5y ago
  We rolled this product out to new users in early October, so it's possible you signed up after that change and have been issuing the new card type. Reach out to our team at support@privacy.com and we'll be happy to take a look at your account and confirm.
  - Kye 5y ago
    They confirmed I signed up with the new thing. Thanks. You might want to add an FAQ entry to cover the situation where someone finds out about the change but doesn't know if it applies to them.
5y ago

therein 5y ago

I had created an account with them right away when they first started, had given them all my information as they required. After a month or so they closed my account due to abuse. All I was doing was to use their service as intended.

auslegung 5y ago
I’m not associated with Privacy in anyway. I’ve had a couple of inconvenient things happened to my account, I can’t remember the details right now, but in interacting with their customer support I got the sense that it was algorithms that weren’t tuned correctly yet. That may be what happened with you?

spooneybarger 5y ago

As a fairly active user, I'm extremely irritated with this being how I am finding out about this change. Wrapping up something that amounts to extra work for me in bubbly language is kind of infuriating but in keeping with a couple of my experiences with them. I'm not sure if I'll continue as a user given my existing unease with how I feel their existing pitch and documentation are misleading. I appreciate the service but I'm not sure it's worth it to me to switch the cards I have given the my other experiences.

d3d1rty 5y ago
Totally agree, especially about the bubbly language used to dress up what is almost certainly a major inconvenience. I've been using their service for years, but if I have to change all of the cards that I have on file everywhere, I might as well just put in my CC details and get the cashback/points.

password4321 5y ago

Maybe time to check out OneFinance for multi-card/ACH https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28247788#28248539 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28247788#28248539

peanut_worm 5y ago

Seems weird to label a massive inconvenience as an “Exciting Update”

orliesaurus 5y ago

Never found a good alternative to privacy.com, so far their service has always been top notch... But now I am curious: who else is out there doing what Privacy.com does, similarly or better?

nyuszika7h 5y ago
Revolut has disposable cards but those are not exactly the same, because they always get destroyed after one payment rather than being able to keep using it for one merchant. Also on the free plan you can only have one normal and one disposable card active at a time.

northerdome 5y ago

Any chance going through the process of updating all my cards could earn a Cashback key? :)

jrochkind1 5y ago

This has always seemed like a very attractive service to me, although I haven't signed up for it myself. While some normal credit cards theoretically offer temporary/limited cards as a service, the software/support is so bad I've never been able to make it work with my existing cards. Have HN'ers (without any financial relationships to the company!) used it? Any reviews? Any downsides?

auslegung 5y ago
I’ve been using the free tier for about two years and love it. I’m not associated in any way. It works flawlessly, just as long as the merchant accepts prepaid debit cards. I’ve created hundreds of privacy cards and have only had a couple of merchants not accept them. As a side note, the integration with 1password (whom I have worked for but no longer) is just :chef_kiss: You can create a privacy card from the merchant’s checking form and it gets saved in 1Password.

efitz 5y ago

I was a paying Privacy customer in the past; I’m only a free customer now because you give too much functionality in the free tier plan and because of the occasional incompatibility with some merchants. I normally immediately end my relationships with companies that make a change that invalidates all the effort that I have already put into the company. Why? You just zeroed my sunk cost and made the cost of switching vs cost of staying the same. I would like to stay with Privacy but I really want some assurance that you’re not going to do it again.

klinquist 5y ago

It seems privacy started issuing these "better" cards... a year ago? Maybe slightly less? I had a bunch of privacy.com cards expire (original customer here) and had to re-generate them. Those cards that I re-generated didn't need to be re-generated again this time.

bhaney 5y ago

I can understand needing to comply with updated KYC requirements from a bank partner, but I'm not really experiencing the "improved merchant acceptance" so far. The very first card that Privacy.com recommended I replace was the card I have for paying my Spectrum bill, which Spectrum is obviously already accepting. Privacy.com even linked me straight to Spectrum's billing page to replace the old card with the new "improved acceptance" card. Imagine my surprise when Spectrum rejects the new card with "Prepaid and gift cards are ineligible" EDIT: I regenerated the card again and Spectrum accepted it no problem. No idea what happened there. Maybe there was something funky with that particular card number, or maybe I mistyped the previous number? Either way, it's working now and I've had no problem with the rest of my card replacements so far (though it has certainly been a bit of a slog).

sillysaurusx 5y ago
... Oh. I just posted a thank-you to Privacy, because I assumed it fixed this problem. I guess I'll edit it. That's unfortunate.