Working on 'Split - Virtual debit cards'. What do you think?
The main focus right now is to allow people to protect their bank debit cards by creating, managing, and using virtual debit cards instead.
I'm also a solo-founder under Dreamineers Inc. looking for a co-founder!
Update: Recently launched a Kickstarter campaign -> Kickstarter campaign -> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/642080622/split-virtual-debit-cards 🤞🏼
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I have experience in Fintech and I offer my help. Feel free to reach me via Twitter.
Meanwhile, the idea is great, it's one of the most underestimated and most delayed feature for most digital banks, while yet it holds so much value. For me personally, I'd use it mainly for two reasons: security and control.
Also, many of the nowadays challenger (and traditional) banks already have this feature (Monzo, Revolut, I guess even more in USA). One potential problem I can think of from the use-case you described is using it with (or locking it to) a service might overwhelm your whole transactional logic that will run on top of some 3rd party transactional service provider. You will have to be filtering for merchants and dealing with all transactional logic based on particular merchant, while at the same time making it sure that the card is not abused in fraudulent activities. Not 100% sure, but if I remember correctly, the legislative for this specific use-case is not same for all countries. Some countries do not allow having a virtual card that can be indefinitely used (I have to double check on this).
Again, I find this very useful use-case, as it's saves the user to have to have the physical card so that they activate it and use it, and for the issuers, saves issuing and delivering physical cards, which is a logistical problem.
hope this helps.
Thank you! Great points. I'd love to discuss further the scenarios you described and the possible regulations by regions.
Followed you on Twitter.
Hi John,
I am also working on similar idea, Let's connect and discuss further. My email id [email protected]
@Needticketsin Awesome, sending you an email now.
That's a cool project, fintech is a hard field but many possibilities there.
I use Revolut which offer virtual cards and i use them for different purpose and often hold them on lock and unlock when i want to purchase so i avoid automatic charges when i forget about some.
Thank you @Broked! I never heard of Revolut until now, I love their approach though, seems very robust.
I've always creatively adapted my Cash app debit card to be used for multiple different purposes, locking when no longer in use and unlocking only when needed (such as when I realize I need to load money to my Cash app's card balance for a subscription to go through—kind of similar to your Revolut virtual card use-case for subs.)
Remembering and tracking "automatic payments" or "subscriptions" that have been set-up/linked to my bank debit cards has always been a struggle of mine.
Split's virtual debit card's "lock a card to a merchant" feature might alleviate this a bit, making it easy to to turn off an "Amazon" card—and only turning it on, let's say—when one receives an alert that Amazon has requested to charge for Prime's monthly charge.
Revolut is one of the leading challenger banks in Europe who are fighting to get the lead spot along n26, monzo and many many others, i think revolut gathered 2.5 million clients in a couple of years. They also offer 1 time use virtual cc card, after purchase you get a new card number.
I would maybe rethink the process, instead of multiple cards who are messier to use, need to add the cc every time, need to remember to lock and to differentiate from competitors I would make just 1 single card, which mainly focuses on subscriptions, and every time there is a charge from a popular saas you automatically set a 30 days timer (or you can guess the duration based on the charge amount from popular services), some days before renew you send a notification alerting the user and asking if they want to renew. If no you block the charges from the merchant, while the cc is still valid for all other purchases.
A merchant based block seems more convenient and easy to manage than a CC based one. You can automatically track all the user subscriptions and show them in a clear way, so the user doesn't have to manually add them.
This would have the value to be able to easily track and stop wasting money from all the subscription we have nowadays which we lost track about, it may be a good incentive for people to adopt the app and then also use the CC for others purchases since they have it in use ( i think CC commission are a good source of income) other than a userbase to offer other services to.
It's interesting, might be 2nd preference after paypal for me for things paypal won't support, I'd really love that to be attached there..
But surely anything you let me to easily limit access to my money.. I mean it has to be 100% easy and fast.. that's kinda the make/break.
I assume this won't be a mainstream for everyone, but for technical advance and security aware you'd probably find a huge adoption.
No idea what you need from the back ends in terms of connecting to the banks / swiping, and this might be a per country thing to handle? ..
So like paypal I know is a one transaction or a set subscription with a pre-determined price or an open account style, and I have easy control to cancel a connected payment approval, so you'r giving me something similar just in an open, can use anywhere way, no matter if they don't support paypal, is how I'm seeing it, like getting control features on a generic payment gateway.
I guess if you just put advance control like 2fa style, approve transaction of amounts, you don't have to actually generate more cards unless it's easier for you
Classic cards are so lacking features and you just lose control
due nowadays I finally got a good finance program that tells me about each transaction daily, not perfect but I got some better visibility.
Hey @hatkyinc, thanks for the great feedback! You're right though unlike Paypal it'll be more checkout agnostic thus the virtual debit cards will be able to be used like any other regular debit card online.
For the initial roll-out, (BETA 0.1.0) we imagine the early adopters to be security concerned people like you said, so we'll only be releasing a basic version that allows the simple functionality of creating and utilizing configured virtual debit cards with funds deriving from one's original bank debit card and/or bank checking account.
On the back-end we're using Privacy.com's API, but looking to use https://www.galileo-ft.com/, or https://adyen.com/ by next year to power a future feature that would allow people on the platform to instantly transfer funds from multiple debit cards (e.g e-trade debit card, Cash app debit card, Bank of America debit card) to a 'Split Balance' that can then be used to fund the virtual debit cards rather than deriving automatically from external funding accounts.
I agree, classic cards are lacking features, it's why we're allowing the beta version to make it possible to finely configure and control a card in the way your banks debit card won't let you; your 2fa style idea sounds great, it's something that sounds possible with https://www.marqeta.com/docs/developer-guides/configuring-gateway-jit-funding. (We tried using Marqeta for the beta, but they require funding, a product in the market, and existing revenue with users)
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