Final - Never worry about fraud, breaches, or cancelled credit cards

@ecetweets Thank you for the enthusiasm! Check out the comment below for some detail here, but we definitely have plans to offer rewards. That said, we think there is significant value to add for many audiences outside of accruing points.

@dswiese Nope! You are only opening one credit account, but we are generating multiple numbers that all map to that same account. You should expect applying for a Final to affect your credit in much the same way that applying for any other credit card would. We are explicitly NOT trying to hurt your credit score.

@marothstein Thanks for the reply! I figured I was just not quite grasping one detail there.

@dswiese Thank you for asking the question! Feel free to shoot over any others you've got.

@sbyrnes Thanks! You're not the only one. And if you were satisfied with their product, I can't wait to hear what you think of Final.

@sbyrnes Yes I really liked this feature when Discover had it, and I told lots of others they should use it too. Very excited that this could come to a physical card as well. Does anybody have Insight as to why Discover discontinued the service? I ask because I'm curious if there was any obstacle that might also trip up Final.

@tacomanator @sbyrnes As far as I understood, they did not want to maintain the product due to cost/complexity and believed their fraud detection was more than good enough to catch any bad transactions. I don't work at Discover, however, so I don't know for sure.

@AddisonHuddy each transaction uses a different credit card number

@AddisonHuddy Thanks for asking! Chase and many banks issue fraud alerts after they suspect a charge has occurred on your card. But they don't do anything to protect you before a fraud event occurs. When fraud occurs (or you simply lose your card) you need to get a new card number, identify all of your fraudulent transactions and replace it across all of your subscriptions and cards on file. With Final, a stolen number is useless to a thief, so no fraudulent charges occur, and you don’t need to replace your payment information everywhere else.

@nikitakorotaev Awesome! We're working to get Final out as fast as we can, but we're starting in the USA first. There are a lot of pieces to launching a credit card in any market, but that's a portion of it.

@arush Obviously, we're not advocating for consumers to cancel their agreements and/ or contracts, but we think its important that consumers have a way to remove the power over your line of credit via one 16 digit card number. With regards to a pre-auth situation, the consumer is still contractually obligated to pay the amount, and the merchant is within their rights to send something like this to a collections agency. That being said, there are still restrictions and protections that will be in place for consumers in this scenario.

@dmgodbout thanks, so an amount cannot be debited even though it is pre-authed?

@arush By definition, you can't debit a line of credit, a pre auth is essentially just "reserving" those funds to pay the merchant. In the long run, this scenario looks a lot like what a chargeback is, but without all of the power in the merchants hands, there will still have to be a decision made by the bank whether or not to honor the pre-auth and protect the consumer. Heck, today I just found out that I had been charged for the past 7 years onto my debit card account by a merchant - emusic.com, that I didn't even know existed (I only found out about it because of billguard, although I couldn't do anything about it)! It made me realize that by them having access to my number that merchant had complete control over my account unless I spent 20 minutes talking to a banking agent. As we're building out Final, I seriously can't wait to use the product myself, and give myself some real control.

@dmgodbout thanks for clarifying. I understand now, this is not a debit card. I think for the consumer it is amazing, but I can see professional fraudsters abusing this and leaving a lot of merchants out of pocket. One more fraud question: Some merchants don't accept prepay credit cards due to the inherent fraud risk. I assume they do this by validating the number ? Will it be possible for merchants to block Final cards from being used?

@arush Final is not a prepaid (debit) or secured (credit) card. There is no reason for a merchant to reject a Final credit card as it will have the same traditional 16 digit number format and will be on one of the major networks - Visa, MC, or Amex.

@SacBookReviewer Anyone who blocks your transaction because it's for too much wine didn't enjoy college. The interesting thing about Final is that purchases have an element of intentionality to them, because the customer establishes relationships proactively. That, and a number of other things give us some enhanced abilities to evaluate fraud. It also helps quite a bit to be legitimately communicative with your customers.

@itsthisjustin From what I gathered they'll be issuing a physical card with the same functionality. Therefore, you get the same protection while swiping.

@tacomanator I'm hesitant to agree as the website doesn't state this anywhere. I think there's some inherent technical issues they would need to overcome to allow for this to happen.. On another note, I'm curious how the card works with returns that need to go back to the same card number or need to be looked up via the same card number. A lot if times if i don't have my receipt, I use my credit card to look up a transaction at a retailer.

@itsthisjustin on their website, the FAQ section "Is There a Physical Card?" reads: "Our Chip & PIN card is the security standard used by the majority of banks in Europe, which has shown to reduce card fraud from in-person transactions by up to 80%. It produces one time numbers for every retail transaction." My guess is the card is reprogrammed on-the-fly. Merchants don't clear transactions directly. As long whoever clears the transaction is setup to handle the numbers, it should work. I'm sure I'm oversimplifying it. See also Plastc Card http://www.producthunt.com/l/1d8... Great question on returns. Maybe handled by the phone app (program the card to a specific transaction)? Or perhaps there is more involved than just the CC# when looking up a transaction?

@tacomanator Plastc also doesn't say they support dynamic EMV. They claim a software update is needed to unlock that capability. Smells fishy. Just a lot of issues, both legal and technical with loading multiple cards onto a EMV chip. All EMV chips produce one time numbers. That's not something unique to Final.