7 ms·

I am an European, so maybe it's different in US, but is too many cards problem that people actually have? Judging by the top 2 stories on HN right now, it proba

• bloometal 13y ago
  You mean '3 out of top 4'? There's a "Protean echo" too.
• sharkweek 13y ago
  I have... a debit card, a credit card, a backup credit card and my corporate card I would love a positively fail safe solution to get this down to one card, but to be honest, neither of these top stories offer that. Because at the end of the day, the most common reason for failure in my standard use case is user error on my part.
  • nawitus 13y ago
    European cards are typically a combined credit and debit card, so that's one less card alraedy.
    • vidyesh 13y ago
      Oh so your bank issues a debit and credit card merged together? How does that work? This sounds fascinating. I am from India, I have multiple cards but most because there is a surge of credit card offers in India, most banks are providing free credit cards and offers to get people signed up. So many of those cards are just used to utilise those offers to get discounts and a certain select websites for discounts. But I practically use my debit card, a credit card hooked to online payment services ( paypal et all ) and a backup credit card when I cross the limit of my other credit card. That's all. One other card I use is just when dining out in which I get some % discount/cash back offers thats all.
      • jnsaff2 13y ago
        They have it in Australia too for a long time. The ATM and POS terminal asks you: Credit/Savings/Checking or smth.
        • surreal 13y ago
          I've seen this in some countries in mainland Europe. Problem was it asked me on my regular UK debit card, had no idea what to choose, trial and error until one of them didn't spit my card out... Thanks for enlightening me
      • mikkom 13y ago
        > Oh so your bank issues a debit and credit card merged together? How does that work? This sounds fascinating. It works just like any other card, you just select which one you want to use when you make a payment. Here is an example of how it looks like http://handelsbanken.fi/shb/inet/icentfi.nsf/vlookuppics/10_kortit_visa_credit_debit_sin_190x190/$file/visa_cd_sin_190x190.jpg http://handelsbanken.fi/shb/inet/icentfi.nsf/vlookuppics/10_...
        • OafTobark 13y ago
          How do you select? In the US, a debit card can be charged like a credit card but the funds are obviously deducted from the balance on your bank account. It also lacks the protection and rewards that a typical credit card would have. I just want to clarify that you indeed have two separate things here on one card and its nothing like how the US does it correct?
          • lflux 13y ago
            On the chip&pin terminal when you enter pin and ok the transaction, there's a selection for "debit" or "credit".
            • deleted 13y ago
              [deleted]
    • superuser2 13y ago
      Most American banks offer a debit card which is functionally identical to credit from a seller's perspective, but it is still debit (and thus does not attain rewards or build your credit history, also disappears from your bank account immediately).
    • davedx 13y ago
      Not ING in the Netherlands. I have an ING bank pass and an ING credit card, and I didn't see any option for combining them, unfortunately.
• isaacb 13y ago
  It's not really an issue for me. I have four cards and don't mind having them all in my wallet. What seems to have happened is a bunch of people with the same idea panicked and put out releases at the same time to avoid looking like copycats.
  • dangrossman 13y ago
    They weren't all put up today, just re-submitted to HN by various people today. Both the Wallaby and Protean Echo sites are from 2012.
  • skygazer 13y ago
    Oddly, for me, the killer feature on the "Coin" card is the proximity alarm if you leave your card behind. I've repeatedly left my card at restaurants after paying, or left the house in the morning without my wallet. Err. However, I would hate to have to bring my credit card with me when I go for a jog.
• milesskorpen 13y ago
  I've got a United airlines CC, an Amazon CC, a dining rewards card, and then 2-3 other legacy credit cards without fees, and three debit cards for different bank accounts.
• untog 13y ago
  I live in the US and I don't get it, either. It can't replace my whole wallet - I see the utility there - so instead my wallet is.. a few mm thinner? With x extra added points of failure?
  • Zombieball 13y ago
    So you want a super card, right? :) Acts as a debit card, credit card, ID / Driver's License, Passport, library card, Costco card, etc. Wish I could replace my wallet with something like that.
    • untog 13y ago
      My phone being able to do those things would be fine (battery issues excepted)
• URSpider94 13y ago
  US card-issuing banks compete by offering varying bonuses for using their card. Typical offers will be 1% cash back or 1 frequent flier mile per dollar spent, but this can flex up to 5X in whichever category that particular card specializes in, often linked to a particular merchant. If you can shift the lion's share of your purchasing onto rewards cards, you can bank hundreds of dollars per year, especially if you use the card for business travel and expenses. There's an opportunity for that to increase by 2X or more if you can put your purchases on the "best" card.
• shawnps 13y ago
  I used to use my credit card almost every day in America, but now that I'm in Japan I don't even have any credit cards. A lot of places don't accept them, so I just use cash everywhere. The one card I have is a bank card that I use to withdraw money from ATMs, mainly at 7-Eleven. I don't really like having to buy gift cards to use on Amazon, but it's just a minor annoyance.
  • icebraining 13y ago
    A nice thing that we have here in Portugal are "virtual credit cards", offered by the banks, which act like a credit card for the merchant but as a debit transaction for the user.
    • tbrock 13y ago
      So the bank gets to charge the store a transaction fee and you don't get the benefit of the bank floating the charge for 30 days? That sounds like a good deal for the bank!
• sperez4mba 13y ago
  I'm european too but I've been living in the US for a few months now and let me tell you I haven't seen in Europe anything even closer to what they have here with the cards. Some people stock rewards/bank/miles cards like who stocks cans of soup in the supermarket. I know it's not directly related to the consolidation card topic but I even have friends who use their father/mother card using their own signature which I don't think is safe because, even if their parents authorized them to use the card, the usual way to verify that you are really you is through the signature and I doubt nobody checks you signed with the right signature in a greasy reastaurant check, so basically I'm pretty sure anybody could steal your card, use it and you would realize just after seeing the charges on the bank statement. A consolidation card is maybe a way to solve the problem. Another way which to me makes more sense is not to sign up for every damn card in the country which most of the time end up collecting dust in the wallet.
• Andrenid 13y ago
  Australia here, definitely wouldn't catch on (IMHO). Nearly everyone I know just has 1 major card, their primary bank card, which works as a debit and credit card in 1. Some people (like myself) have a 2nd card, a credit card for major purchases, that has better interest rates etc, but that one isn't used as much. Most the other cards we carry aren't bank cards, they're Medicare (if we get hurt), drivers license / ID, and RFID cards to get into work or your apartment building (I have 2 of them)... and all these cards, these "one card" startups can't replace. Unless they can replace my entire wallet with a single card, that works as a drivers license, medicare, debit/credit card, and RFID card for my house, then you're not really offering anything special.
  • abalone 13y ago
    Australia is a regulated market that abolishes the high interchange fees that power the reward programs in the U.S. This is specifically for the U.S. market.
    • _pmf_ 13y ago
      > Australia is a regulated market that abolishes the high interchange fees that power the reward programs in the U.S. This is specifically for the U.S. market. Obviously, Australia is not free™ enough.
  • SyneRyder 13y ago
    Another Aussie here, and I could maybe be interested. I typically carry at least 3 cards on me: credit card, AmEx, separate bank keycard / debit card, plus coffee loyalty cards. I can't always remember if a store takes AmEx (high Frequent Flyer point earnings), or if they do take AmEx but impose a 3% surcharge (negates the FF points benefit). It would be nice to have just one card, that automatically knows the best card to use at each store. But without support for PayWave / PayPass / Chip & PIN, it's DOA in Australia. I want a card I can use when traveling to Europe as well (requires Chip & PIN). And Coin has a sleeker Uber-esque look to it as well - that rainbow on the Wallaby card doesn't exactly say "luxury" or "exclusive". (Not that it has to be, but it'd be nicer to drop a black / carbon card as an early adopter, not a plastic thingy called "wallaby" with a rainbow.)
• nraynaud 13y ago
  I would say there is a difference in mentality, from what I have seen in the US, they like to hoard stuff, and they always take credit for everything like there is no tomorrow. They don't really have this idea that you should avoid credit, and should you take one it should only be for (hopefully) productive investment, they buy TVs, clothing and food with credits. Not uselessly using borrowed money for everything can actually hurt you the day you actually need to borrow money because they will consider your econ. 101 attitude (save before buying if it's not an investment) a "risk".
  • IgorPartola 13y ago
    Credit card != debt. Please stop trolling.
    • nraynaud 13y ago
      what's the difference between having a credit and having a debt?
      • IgorPartola 13y ago
        You can have a credit card and carry no debt on it. One way is to simply not use it. For example I have a card that I rarely use but in an emergency I could spend up to $X without tapping my bank account. This can be very handy since you can use a credit card to pay for a hospital bill, a tank of gas, or a hotel room, but you cannot use it to pay rent (typically done with a check). The second way to do this is to take advantage of the grace period. Every purchase you make gives you a roughly 30 day period where no interest is charged. Pay off the full amount during that period and you simply use the credit card service for free. If you do this you end up ahead: typically credit cards offer benefits for using them. For example American Express gives you an extra year of warranty on most items. Lots of them give you cash back (1% or more) or "miles" or "points" you can redeem for various goods. Most cards do not have a yearly membership fee either so you end up getting everything you buy for a small discount. It is true that some portion of Americans do "carry a balance": do not pay off their balance at the end of the grace period and must pay a finance charge proportional to the amount they did not pay off. However, this is usually not done by choice but out of necessity. I would do this too if for example I had to pay for an emergency trip to see family but did not have enough savings, etc. As long as you pay things off quickly, you are not really getting trouble in terms of losing substantial amounts of money.
• abalone 13y ago
  The reason is U.S. banks have been getting creative with reward programs lately. They entice you with "5% back on gas" or "100,000 points" which all seems very grand. So naturally us nerds want to hack the system for maximum profit. The reality though is that these programs are not sustainable if fully exploited. Interchange (the fee U.S. merchants pay when you run a card) is under 2%.* A bank can't reward you more than that without losing money. Well, they can make up for it on the interest they charge on debt, but presumably if you're optimizing cards then you're optimizing where you hold your debt too. The way banks make these programs viable is with marketing, tricks, rules, time limits, etc. that make you think you're doing better than you really are. Smart consumers figure it out. But not everyone bothers to, and so there's enough "dumb" ones to make it possible. Kind of like how gym memberships work. Long story short: If a service like Wallaby takes off and levels the playing field, then these programs will disappear. So if you're one of those "smart" consumers that enjoys exploiting cards to make an extra buck or two, then you're better off not rocking the boat. *Europe's interchange is a fraction of that, which is why you don't see this rewards phenomenon there.
  • Aqua_Geek 13y ago
    Isn't the interchange fee higher on some rewards cards?
    • abalone 13y ago
      A little bit on higher-end rewards cards. But those typically dish out better rewards too. See the rates here: http://usa.visa.com/merchants/operations/interchange_rates.html http://usa.visa.com/merchants/operations/interchange_rates.h...
  • Flenser 13y ago
    Santander UK give 3% on fuel, 2% on department stores and 1% on household bills. It looks like Lloyds are going to introduce a similar scheme soon too.
    • abalone 13y ago
• wldlyinaccurate 13y ago
  I'm living in the UK right now, and I'm the same as you with having only one card. However most of my friends have several credit cards, which I find really strange. I wonder if it's a symptom of how broken the economy is... It's too easy to get multiple credit cards and use them all to pay each other off, so you're essentially living in constant debt.
  • bruceboughton 13y ago
    I don't think it's a symptom of "how broken the economy is". If you're paying each off when it's due, it can be a good way to make a small chunk of change.
  • arethuza 13y ago
    Well, I have a debit card - which I use for pretty much everything that isn't a business expense. I also have a personal credit card which I use very occasionally in situations where a debit card won't work (e.g. getting Euros from a ATM in Schipol airport) and an "emergency" personal card that I use in situations where neither my debit or main personal credit cards work (about once a year so far). I also have a company credit card.
• Semaphor 13y ago
  I do have several cards (even if most of them are rarely used). I think a big difference is, that we still have coins. I see all those wallets on kickstarter that are useless for Europeans as they have no space for coins. I'd want a single card and I'd want one of those sleek wallets if all I had were cards and bills.
• dalore 13y ago
  I'm European too (if you count UK, some don't), and I have way too many cards, like 30+. I've add to trim down to 4 and keep some more in my bag. Tried some of the apps that let you put in the cards and it shows a barcode, but that barcode doesn't always scan on some of the barcode readers so you actually need the card.
• taude 13y ago
  It's not just the credit cards....that's the easy problem to solve (especially with so many alternative pay methods at the moment),
• neil_s 13y ago
  Living in the UK, I have only 1 debit card, which works just fine. I don't need to build a credit history and credit cards don't offer much in terms of rewards so there's no incentive to live in debt instead of only paying for what I can afford. What is the problem is all the loyalty cards. I sign up for any loyalty cards even if I don't plan on going back. Design a way for me to have all of them on me, and remind me to use the right one when I'm in the location, and I'm sold. Currently I just leave most at home, leading to under-utilization without careful planning.
• rexreed 13y ago
  I'm a single data point, but no, it's not a problem I have. My wallet is thick, but getting rid of the charge cards (only) in my wallet doesn't solve any pain point I have. But then again, Snapchat doesn't solve a problem I have either, and somehow they're worth Billions, so what do I know?
• adkk 13y ago
  Personal debit card, business debit card, personal credit card(s), business debit card. Loyalty cards, gym card, even drivers license (although the magnetic stripe for the drivers license is of limited use - airports and car rentals)
• thomasjames 13y ago
  If you do not have at least two cards here, you do not understand how the domestic credit bureaus work. It is a major factor in determining your credit-worthiness for everything else you do. In countries with higher levels of home ownership and expensive education, it matters a lot, and it is not necessarily all about using them for consumption.