Friday, June 02, 2006

Credit Card Number Portability

An interesting idea over at Signal vs. Noise

Changing your phone number vs. changing your credit card

Now that everyone in the US can change their cell/land phone carriers and keep their number, it’s time the credit card industry follows suit.

Even when you stay in the same credit card company, but you change card types, your card number changes. So, if you go from a Citibank cash rebate card to a Citibank American Airlines rewards card your card number changes. This didn’t used to be that big of a deal, but now with so many recurring monthly services (cell phone, web apps, cable, health club, satellite radio, tivo, etc…) being automatically billed to your credit card a card number change becomes a Big Deal.

2 comments:

Angela Copeland said...

Good article--

It seems like they'd have to make a lot of changes to do this. ...i.e. a new verification process.

Jake of All Trades said...

Biggest problem with it seems to be the difference between "cancelling due to convenience" and "cancelling due to fraud." The whole issue of the card number identifying the type of card doesn't seem to that big of a deal, as phones used to work the same way.