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I'm not sure how folks regard privacy.com (the domain is a little... lofty?) but I use that to present my bank to PayPal as if it was a credit card. I change ch

I'm not sure how folks regard privacy.com (the domain is a little... lofty?) but I use that to present my bank to PayPal as if it was a credit card. I change charge limits on the fly to be just a bit more than I need.

1f60c 4y ago
Revolut offers free (disposable) virtual debit cards and isn't limited to just the US. (No affiliation; I'm just a happy customer.)
- shp0ngle 4y ago
  Isn’t Revolut just for Europeans?
  - input_sh 4y ago
    Not exclusively European countries, but also not the whole Europe: https://www.revolut.com/change-country/ https://www.revolut.com/change-country/ I was able to get my hands on one of their cards, but it was useless to me as I couldn't actually put any money on it from my unsupported country.
    - shp0ngle 4y ago
      Ah but it is available in USA…I didn’t know that!
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - momirlan 4y ago
    they closed their Canadian operations a couple of years ago. good riddance.
- account-5 4y ago
  Revolut seems less trustworthy that PayPal. And there appears to be a lot less protection for you as their customer.
  - sofixa 4y ago
    > Revolut seems less trustworthy that PayPal Why? > And there appears to be a lot less protection for you as their customer. They have EU banking licenses (depending on where you are a different one applies to you), but they are a regular bank with all the protections that includes for a customer - if they go bankrupt, your money is guaranteed up to a certain extent; they can't just close your account and keep the money like PayPal do, etc. etc..
    - megous 4y ago
      They may have the licenses, but do they actually do business under them? They did not in the past. So it always looked just like a fun ploy to gain some credibility.
      - sofixa 4y ago
        > They may have the licenses, but do they actually do business under them? They did not in the past What do you mean? They provide banking services, they cannot do that without a banking license to do it under. They used to only have one, in Lithuania, and use it for all operations, but now they have a bunch more and the most appropriate applies (e.g. I'm in France, and I'm under the French one).
        megous 4y ago
        Companies can provide money services without a banking license. A lot of companies do. When I duckduck the question, even revolut has this in their FAQ: https://megous.com/dl/tmp/bbebf0d88acb54d8.png https://megous.com/dl/tmp/bbebf0d88acb54d8.png It's possible to have a license and not use it.
- fauigerzigerk 4y ago
  Wise offers free virtual cards as well.
- hansvm 4y ago
  Tried them once. - Basically none of the banking functions were available outside the app - The app itself was buggy. There was some sort of "vault" or whatever they called it that had attractive interest rates (the reason I signed up), and after wasting hours of my life over a few weeks with customer support I decided it would never work - Unlike any other bank-like service I've used, you can't just get mailed a check and close the account. Neat idea maybe, but at the time the app was buggy and wouldn't let you withdraw fully if you had anything in savings because of some sort of minimum balance nonsense - You can't use the app if they think your phone isn't sufficiently secure. This is more on Apple/Google for caving to that bullshit, but IMO an app with its own security model shouldn't have any clue how you access your phone - Deposits were capped to like $10 for the first day, $100 for the second, and so on. I don't remember the exact schedule, but it meant that instead of just depositing an old 401k I had to design over a period of time a series of increasingly large deposits of some other money (just like a fraudster would do? ELI5, what are they actually preventing?) just to be able to throw a check into the account - Deposits to and withdrawals from Revolut took an obscene number of days, nobody on either side of the transaction could tell where the money was (magically available in neither account), and the transactions were 10x longer when I was trying to leave And on and on. Like, I'm sure they're fine on average, and they're probably better than when I tried last time, but I haven't had a worse banking experience yet anywhere by a longshot. The basics for an online bank are logging in, depositing money, and withdrawing money, and neither the basics nor the fancy features they sold me on were very functional. Happy to hear the virtual debit cards work for you :)
soiler 4y ago
I've been using their app for years, it's pretty helpful. I really wish they used a different name, though.
xkcd-sucks 4y ago
I got halfway through the "Privacy.com" sign up process and discovered they wanted my online banking username and password to access funds, with some ridiculous alternative like mailing a paper check
- blamazon 4y ago
  Yeah... that's FinTech. I find it soothing to consider how little I trust my bank with those credentials when I'm handing them over.
  - xkcd-sucks 4y ago
    At the very least one would expect the bank to be salting and hashing - PrivacyDotCom presumably has to keep the plaintext in some form in order to use them! As a secondary concern, the bank has occasional 2fa, and definitely does some kind of anomaly detection. Primed by the ickiness of the user/pass request I just had a mental image of some hacky Selenium script on an AWS IP address filling out the login form and getting my online banking disabled proactively.
- jiveturkey 4y ago
  privacy.com is just like VPNs. It's not private; you're "just" moving the pieces. That's not to say that these things aren't useful, but caveat emptor.

1f60c 4y ago

Revolut offers free (disposable) virtual debit cards and isn't limited to just the US. (No affiliation; I'm just a happy customer.)

shp0ngle 4y ago
Isn’t Revolut just for Europeans?
- input_sh 4y ago
  Not exclusively European countries, but also not the whole Europe: https://www.revolut.com/change-country/ https://www.revolut.com/change-country/ I was able to get my hands on one of their cards, but it was useless to me as I couldn't actually put any money on it from my unsupported country.
  - shp0ngle 4y ago
    Ah but it is available in USA…I didn’t know that!
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- momirlan 4y ago
  they closed their Canadian operations a couple of years ago. good riddance.
account-5 4y ago
Revolut seems less trustworthy that PayPal. And there appears to be a lot less protection for you as their customer.
- sofixa 4y ago
  > Revolut seems less trustworthy that PayPal Why? > And there appears to be a lot less protection for you as their customer. They have EU banking licenses (depending on where you are a different one applies to you), but they are a regular bank with all the protections that includes for a customer - if they go bankrupt, your money is guaranteed up to a certain extent; they can't just close your account and keep the money like PayPal do, etc. etc..
  - megous 4y ago
    They may have the licenses, but do they actually do business under them? They did not in the past. So it always looked just like a fun ploy to gain some credibility.
    - sofixa 4y ago
      > They may have the licenses, but do they actually do business under them? They did not in the past What do you mean? They provide banking services, they cannot do that without a banking license to do it under. They used to only have one, in Lithuania, and use it for all operations, but now they have a bunch more and the most appropriate applies (e.g. I'm in France, and I'm under the French one).
      - megous 4y ago
        Companies can provide money services without a banking license. A lot of companies do. When I duckduck the question, even revolut has this in their FAQ: https://megous.com/dl/tmp/bbebf0d88acb54d8.png https://megous.com/dl/tmp/bbebf0d88acb54d8.png It's possible to have a license and not use it.
fauigerzigerk 4y ago
Wise offers free virtual cards as well.
hansvm 4y ago
Tried them once. - Basically none of the banking functions were available outside the app - The app itself was buggy. There was some sort of "vault" or whatever they called it that had attractive interest rates (the reason I signed up), and after wasting hours of my life over a few weeks with customer support I decided it would never work - Unlike any other bank-like service I've used, you can't just get mailed a check and close the account. Neat idea maybe, but at the time the app was buggy and wouldn't let you withdraw fully if you had anything in savings because of some sort of minimum balance nonsense - You can't use the app if they think your phone isn't sufficiently secure. This is more on Apple/Google for caving to that bullshit, but IMO an app with its own security model shouldn't have any clue how you access your phone - Deposits were capped to like $10 for the first day, $100 for the second, and so on. I don't remember the exact schedule, but it meant that instead of just depositing an old 401k I had to design over a period of time a series of increasingly large deposits of some other money (just like a fraudster would do? ELI5, what are they actually preventing?) just to be able to throw a check into the account - Deposits to and withdrawals from Revolut took an obscene number of days, nobody on either side of the transaction could tell where the money was (magically available in neither account), and the transactions were 10x longer when I was trying to leave And on and on. Like, I'm sure they're fine on average, and they're probably better than when I tried last time, but I haven't had a worse banking experience yet anywhere by a longshot. The basics for an online bank are logging in, depositing money, and withdrawing money, and neither the basics nor the fancy features they sold me on were very functional. Happy to hear the virtual debit cards work for you :)

soiler 4y ago

I've been using their app for years, it's pretty helpful. I really wish they used a different name, though.

xkcd-sucks 4y ago

I got halfway through the "Privacy.com" sign up process and discovered they wanted my online banking username and password to access funds, with some ridiculous alternative like mailing a paper check

blamazon 4y ago
Yeah... that's FinTech. I find it soothing to consider how little I trust my bank with those credentials when I'm handing them over.
- xkcd-sucks 4y ago
  At the very least one would expect the bank to be salting and hashing - PrivacyDotCom presumably has to keep the plaintext in some form in order to use them! As a secondary concern, the bank has occasional 2fa, and definitely does some kind of anomaly detection. Primed by the ickiness of the user/pass request I just had a mental image of some hacky Selenium script on an AWS IP address filling out the login form and getting my online banking disabled proactively.
jiveturkey 4y ago
privacy.com is just like VPNs. It's not private; you're "just" moving the pieces. That's not to say that these things aren't useful, but caveat emptor.