Final: One credit card account to rule them all

I just am not that impressed by Final.

First, I have had virtual credit card numbers through MBNA and then Bank of America for over a decade. So this is not all that ground-breaking.

Second, I have found myself using virtual credit cards less and less as most of my purchases are with a few companies (Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google) and most of the rest use Paypal. In addition, the credit card companies' fraud alerting seems pretty good, and with the app, I can pretty much see my credit card activity in real time.

Third, I use a card with 2% rewards and the extra 1% really makes a difference as I try to put everything that I can on that credit card.

Finally, as mentioned in the article, it is a pain to have to change a bunch of services's billing information. The fact that Final is a VC startup to me means that there is a fairly good chance of them going under than say one of the big credit card companies.

I was burned by Simple (online checking account company), which had similar promises. Turns out, they had terrible QA, couldn't get their shit together, and I had frequent errors in my account. Payments not going out, payments going out twice, card stopped working when I tried to withdraw cash and they couldn't tell me why, deposits lost in limbo for days -- even customer service couldn't tell me what my account balance was at several points. Many other banking errors on top of that.

I take "online banking disruption" with a huge grain of salt now. I'm fine taking some risk with investments, or business, or what I actually spend my money on, but the sort of day-to-day banking and payment systems aren't something I really like gambling with. I want to know that my paycheck will be in my account on or before the 1st each month. I want to know that -- if I need to -- I can pay my mortgage 5 days before it's due, and I'll be fine. There's too much uncertainty in the world already to add uncertainty on to THAT with your checking and credit card accounts.

If you don't use the card exclusively, and you use it for low-risk things, it may not be a big deal. But I certainly wouldn't be comfortable relying on it.

> And if one of those cards is ever compromised, or even if they want to just cancel or stop paying for a service, all they need to do is delete the virtual card.

I hate this concept. It's the epitome of where we've come online, in general. The ability to "ghost" a service is just childish. Go online and cancel, or pick up the phone and do it.

Also, make sure you're not contractually obligated to any remaining balances. Cancelling your card won't get you very far with that.

I'll clarify by saying that if a service refuses to let you cancel (Been there, still doing that) then you have the right to cancel the card number, but not without attempting to be responsible for your subscriptions, first.