Secondary Card and Pots

(Kyle Lindeque) #1

So I’ve just gone on holiday, and I’m faced with a minor problem. The country I’m visiting has a bit of a history with card cloning and scams.

While I understand there is guarantees and I can deal with unauthorised transactions that may occur I often take the approach of limiting damage. As such I moved my money out of my primary account, into a pot except for a predefined amount of my choosing and disabled my overdraft. As such I feel more comfortable now.

This lead me to think of an idea around secondary cards and some interesting uses.

If I had another card, I could link it directly to a pot:

  • it could only make use of the pot value available
  • simplifying it, it’s intended as a secondary service so Apple Pay would be silly (at least for my opinion as you’d only want your primary card)
  • don’t link it to over draft access
  • can be used by kids, you can put money into their pot and see their spending
  • can be used on a night out to limit spending (yes you’ll just top up but still helps with your spending)
  • can be used in risky locations like in my instance
  • same benefits of freezing, etc
  • switch which pot it is assigned to dynamically
  • transactions still appear in your feed as per normal (perhaps indicating it came from a pot / secondary card in the fine print)
  • brings back the benefits of pre-paid cards that many people loved about Monzo in the alpha/beta days, but still keeping the benefits of a full current account.
  • I can keep typing :joy:

Anyways. Just an idea I thought I’d throw out. :grin:

(Jamie 🏳️‍🌈) #2

I think if you use Apple Pay the retailer never sees your card number? Can someone confirm that?

Also, as a secondary ‘firewall’ you could keep your card frozen and only thaw it to pay somewhere, before refreezing it. You’ll be notified in–app if an attempted charge is rejected due to the freeze.

#3

I’d like to be able to nominate a pot using my existing card. Would rather not carry another card!

(William Brown) #5

Apple Pay shows a card on the phone screen when you put it to the card reader device and it shows up so they know who card is with

(Jamie 🏳️‍🌈) #6

You could always place your phone on the device screen down to hide it.

(MikeF) #7

I’m not in the habit of letting others look at the screen when I pay so it would be hit and miss as to whether they know or not. (They’d have to both see it and recognise it)

(Kyle Lindeque) #8

Apple Pay does indeed. But not all merchants support contactless outside of the western world. In Africa where I grew up it’s chip and pin or magnetic swipe only when people do accept your card.

Someone seeing the screen doesn’t matter. Card cloning is the process where by your card is physically copied.

The thing why I am going with the idea of a second card is that I have my life linked to this number. Cloning or losing my card results in a lot of time wasted logging into all my subscriptions. By having a secondary card that can be disposed when compromised is useful.