Tag: credit cards

Monopoly gets with the times

Post ImageI guess nothing is sacred anymore. Remember playing Monopoly as a kid? Great game right? I dunno about you, but I remember the piles of paper money being the best part. In the newest versions of the game however, the paper money is gone:

Parker Brothers is phasing out the cash-based version’s funmoney and replacing it with an “Electronic Banking” flavor that could leave Mr. Moneybags turning his pockets inside out as his stash is replaced by a magnetic strip. New kits are completely devoid of the famous multi-colored bills; instead, you’ll find phoney Visa debit cards and a calculator / reader which keeps a running tabulation of your riches — or lack thereof. A deal was struck with Visa to design the mock cards and readers, presumably after surveys showed that 70% of adults used cash less often now than they did a decade ago (no surprise there). When asked about the dramatic change, Parker said replacing cash with plastic “showed the game was moving with the times.”

Even though I remember the paper money being extremely fun, I am glad that it’s gone. Why? Because I am a huge supporter of getting rid of cash altogether. No need to teach kids how to use a dying form of money. Bring on the smart plastic cards, cell phone wallets, or even better, implantable identity/wallet solutions!

Read: Engadget

Who pays – you or your credit card?

Post ImageI was reading some older posts at Signal vs. Noise, the 37signals blog about all sorts of things, and I came across a post on number portability and the idea that credit cards should be the same:

Maybe one day your card number will be portable like your phone number. Theres no reason for it to change unless fraud has been committed. If you need the number changed then you can change it, but otherwise it remains the same no matter the issuer or card type.

The reasoning behind this is that there are so many recurring monthly services now that changing your credit card number (which happens if you change account types, or in some cases, when your card is renewed, etc) causes huge problems with missed payments and the need to update information manually.

I see three problems with this. The first is that lots of people have multiple cards. This is more of a problem with credit cards than it is with cell phone numbers (where the majority of users have only one). I don’t think MasterCard and Visa, for example, would like the idea of combining your two cards into one number. So you’ve still got to worry about which card to use, when each one expires, etc. The second problem is fraud. Somehow I see more problems related to fraud occurring if you have the same number all the time. Maybe I’m wrong here, but that’s the gut feeling.

The larger problem is long term – when you pay for something, are you paying, or is your credit card? You are obviously. The solution to the problems described in the SVN post is not the ability to keep one credit card number, it’s the ability to not worry about how you’re paying, just that you are paying. As a business, I don’t care if you’re paying cash, Visa, or debit card. All I care about is that you’ve paid, either right now, or on a recurring basis. If transactions were as simple as “Mack has paid Paramagnus for this” then a lot of these problems would go away. Did Mack use his old credit card or a new one? Maybe cash? Who cares, he’s paid! The scenario today is explained very well in the SVN post:

Our customers swear their cards are in good standing, but it turns out that they just switched cards and didnt realize their card number changed. Even though they have the money, and their credit is pristine, the number they had in the system is no longer a valid number and the transaction is declined.

The ability to keep a credit card number consistent might solve this in the short term, but the larger problem still exists. At some point, I hope we can move from validating a piece of plastic, to validating a person’s actual credit and financial standing.

Read: Signal vs. Noise