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Comment by ryporter | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why Orloff is so excited about giving customers the ability to easily lock and unlock their credit card. As a customer, that's really not very valuable to me. I'd rarely use the feature, and it likely wouldn't save me any money, since I'm only liable for up to $50 of fraudulent charges (and haven't paid anything at all each time my number has been stolen in the past).

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As a customer, that's really not very valuable to me

It is an excellent feature and something consumers crave knowing they can curb fraud. Many companies are now doing this. Capital One has the lock card feature, Discover has the Freeze it feature among others and hopefully their video convinces you as to why it is a good feature. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0ZNAHZlkMY

Many people (that I know / have known) frequently misplace their wallet and then their cards are in this limbo state where it's unclear if they are stolen and have to be replaced (expensive for the co., inconvenient for the customer) or just not found.

Seems like a useful feature to me.

This seems like a win-win to me, I can misplace my wallet/CCs a lot and would be very grateful for a way to lock down my cards temporarily. If used correctly by consumers this would massively reduce fraud done with the stolen plastic, I'd be interested to know how much of fraud is done with the actual card.

> I'm only liable for up to $50 of fraudulent charges...

While true, I locked my Simple card after a $20ish charge in the Dominican Republic, then initiated a support request asking about it. Simple's nice and refunds all fraud, but some banks I'd have saved $30 there.

Plus, your not being liable doesn't mean you don't pay for it. We just pay indirectly - it's figured into the bank's fees, the interest rates they'll pay you on savings, etc. I like Simple, and I was happy to be able to stop it myself before they went and charged $1k somewhere else.

One time on vacation my wife's purse was stolen. We had to call the bank(s) and get them to kill all of the credit cards. Then we recovered the purse. For the rest of the vacation she didn't have access to a credit card (unless I was with her) and had to use cash for everything. It would have been much less of an inconvenience if we would have had the ability to easily lock and unlock the CC.

There are plenty of people for whom $50 is quite a lot of money to lose.

And I know some people who have cards for online purchases only, which they use very rarely. Leaving the card locked except when actually in use would be quite a security improvement.

Assuming it's a Visa card and it was not a pin based transaction. Visa has a Zero Liability of fraudulent transactions for card holders regardless of the issuing bank

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