I wish I could just have the ability to create virtual credit card numbers. I would be able to fill it with a certain balance, set up recurring balance refills, change the expiration date, keep a merchant whitelist, and cancel the number at any time. This gives me the opportunity to make sure that even if my card number was stolen or abused, the charge won't go through. If I sign up for a free trial or a service I only want for x months but need a card on record, I give them a virtual number and set the card up to cancel itself after the period is up. Or if I want to put all my netflix, hulu, pandora, etc charges on one number, I can set a monthly allowance for each merchant. If someone changes their prices, the charge gets declined and I can go back and reup the limit if I want.

I use entropay.com, which lets you create virtual credit cards, and pre-charge them. And if the account runs out of money, the transaction is declined, and the merchant has no way to get your money after that.

As a warning, there are some problems with entropay.com though. Over the last year, some merchants have been able to detect that entropay.com virtual credit cards are prepaid, and require a plastic card. Also, entropy cards are from Malta, so companies like Spotify or Netflix will only give you access to content licensed there. Finally, and most importantly, entropay.com has a tendency to "float" your money, and I've heard that sometimes they just snatch it. I've never dealt with more than $150 at a time.

Since they are based in Malta, I think it would be very hard to dispute anything with them. But if you have to do any bigger transactions, you should use a bank here anyway. But it's great for trying out services where you don't trust them, or are just concerned with overages. I use them as a buffer for a lot of recurring payments.

I've seen some services on hackernews that offer virtual credit cards, but the problem is, that they all are tied to some underlying checking account, and even if the prepaid balance is declined, the company is obligated to somehow collect the money, if they can. There's no way to simply cancel a recurring payment. I'm sure that this is because they are required to by banks in the US.

I really wanted to have a complex money firewall, like you describe, but in practice, I've ended up just using plain old credit cards for most things. It is still very good to have an entropay account, though.

Netflix gives access to content based on the country you (or rather your IP) are physically present in.

Check out privacy.com

Privacy.com is awesome! I use it for most all of my transactions which I can't use PayPal for.

Most of this is already available:

https://www.bankofamerica.com/privacy/accounts-cards/shopsaf...

Still allows through recurring payments though

In Portugal we can do just that with MBNet :D https://www.mbnet.pt/

Hey (founder of Root here), our platform gives you full API access to, for instance, do any of the things you do on the normal banking interface through code - like initiating a transfer to someone else, or building your own recurring payments system using a simple cron job :)

Apps that let you manage video game currency often give you so much more control than your bank's app gives you over your real money in your checking account! It's an imbalanced situation, and I think there's a lot of room to improve. Perhaps I can use your API to do something like that.

The banking game, gg no re.

I believe what apostacy meant was the ability to prevent a recurring payment from occurring without approval. I may have misunderstood what they meant but something along the lines of: a debit shows up in your account as pending, and you have X amount of time to approve or decline it. That way you are preventing a debit from even occurring in the first place, rather than having to fight your bank to get the money back.

What I basically want, is to have more control. I want a similar amount of control as to what I have with paper money, or even virtual in game currencies.

Right now, the scale is not tipped in my favor. I would be happy to pay for it.

I understand that banks have reasons for things to be arraigned the way they are.

I would love to have a "personal firewall" level of control over my money. I'd like to see that Widget of the month club is requesting $50, and I can confirm/deny it.

I only signed up for a widget of the month because it seemed like a good idea, but they deceived me into thinking I could back out at any time, and then when I cancelled my account, they just "paused" it for three months.

We don't use the "banking" model for other resources that are supposed to be our property. An app on my phone isn't supposed to be able to delete my photos, and the accepted solution is not that I call some external entity to undelete them. I know that these examples are very different, but that is what I would like.

I can also simply block someone from contacting me if I want, without having to justify it to my isp. I want to be able to do that with my money. If someone disagrees with me doing this, and thinks I still owe them money, they can be free to sue me, or do some other sanctions.

Right now, I create virtual credit cards and only fund them enough to pay my recurring payments. I want to automate it.

95% of the time, recurring payments that fail for me are done in bad faith, and these actors will not make a fuss if they can't process their payments.

I know this is probably a pipe dream, and that there are already system I can use, and that our financial system is set up the way it is for reasons. But that's a pain point for me, and a lot of people. People would like to be empowered, and feel that they have control. I think, in the end, things won't really change. Most people will still pay legitimate charges.

This screenshot from the front page seems to be offering something like what you want? [1] And they clearly support virtual cards so why wouldn't automating that work through their API? [2]

[1] https://root.co.za/images/rootcode.svg

[2] https://root.co.za/images/mobile-desktop-mockup.jpg

EDITS: added 2nd part and formatting

What I've found, is that every virtual credit card provider has to try to process recurring payments, even if that virtual credit card is depleted, kind of defeating a big use of virtual credit cards. I am sure that this is something they were obligated to do by other financial institutions. So virtual credit cards just end up being solely for online transactions that are not recurring.

The only company I have found that actually does what I'm describing is entropay.com, and they are based in Malta and I don't trust them for big transactions, as they have been known to steal people's money.

True, although I wonder whether the transaction can be asynchronous. For example, if you don't approve or deny within a few seconds, I'd be willing to bet that the transaction times out.

This would be fine for in-person transactions, where you can approve it on your phone, but for transactions you aren't expecting (e.g. recurring monthly subscriptions) it seems like you'd need some notice -- or a long timeout period.

I'd love to collapse all of my recurring payments into a monthly report, that I can review and authorize. This is exactly the thing banks are suited to handle.

It would also be cool if a bank could abstract bill payments for me, where they present the debit, and show the time window to pay it, and let me select what business day to process it on.

Actually, all of these services exist in one form or another. If you have a business account. And most banks have bill payment processing. But I'm surprised that no bank is offering these services bundled together, directly to consumers. I'd happily pay for a checking account console.

> I'd love to collapse all of my recurring payments into a monthly report, that I can review and authorize.

Yes, even just a list of the recurring payments (that is updated in realtime and that you can centrally discontinue) should be available to the banking consumer -- and it should be the responsibility of the banking entity to provide this feature.

The do not, because the financial sector makes its revenue from payments occurring, rather than not. A consumer would naturally gravitate towards a bank that was not limited by this concern (or derived equivalent profit elsewhere for provision of value)

I will check it out.

I would love to be able to script my bank. Chase.com is an ongoing battle. There are plenty of projects to automate banking, but it's an uphill battle.

I'm sure if I had a business account, I'd have more access than what the browser gives me.

I would love to be able to do things like, see what payments are flagged as recurring, and group them together, and sum them.

Exactly. I always imagined a future where there would be an oAuth scopes like gateway for banks. Something like -

This website requires the following permission:

    [x] Monthly recurring payments of $20
        [o] Automatically get the payments
        [ ] Send me the link to deposit every month

    > Proceed
    > Cancel

Life would have been so simpler then (Obviously I haven't thought this through completely, but something similar to this with proper security would be far superior than our current model of Name + Credit card number + CVV).

Well, this is a thing in the EU.

You usually pay via SEPA recurring transfers, and just authorize a company to take $n money monthly (and can easily revoke).

Or you set up an automated recurring transaction to transmit that much money.

Or you allow a company to take just any amount, at any time, but you can revoke each transfer.

This last is how you usually connect debit cards, credit cards, Amazon, PayPal, to your account.

I developed a serious allergy to what were called "debit orders" when I used to live outside the USA many years ago. You would sign a form to allow the merchant to debit your bank account every month for (say) a subscription.

Cancellation was theoretically possible by calling or mailing the merchant, but too many times, an extra payment (or two, or three...) went through and it was hell to get the money back. The banks were not much help - you would have to try to get the debit reversed, and it was no fun.

I think I had a few similar experiences here in the USA, but I can't recall specifics. Now I pay everything in "push" mode via online banking, as silly as that may seem.

I hope things like SEPA work better at revocation than what I experienced back in the day!

In the UK this is known as a "standing order". The account holder is fully in control of how much money goes out and when. Is this not the case in other places?

In South Africa we have stop orders and debit orders. Stop orders are for an amount agreed in advance. Debit orders allow the payee to debit your account for whatever amount they choose, obviously with the proviso that they have to produce evidence that you agreed to this, and that they can justify the charge. I've heard some stories about people having issues with unscrupulous payees abusing this, but I believe that's rare. I, for example, pay for my mortgage, credit card, cellphone, satellite TV, etc. via debit order.

Great idea. I hate the current system where companies can get access to your bank account and pull money out at will.

I think most bank's, websites already allow for this. Look under payees or pay bills

In my experience, this is only the case if you set up the payment through the bank's automatic payment system, which typically uses paper checks (but may do an electronic deposit for some payees who have specially registered).

Most subscription-based businesses that go to your bank account get an authorization to do an "ACH pull". In some instances, this authorization alone can act as collateral (e.g., in securing payday loans or medical payment agreements). As such, I would assume that allowing consumers to revoke the authorization is more problematic than it sounds.

That's right, the banks often send paper checks. Automatic bill pay is shit.