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Comment by neom | Hacker News Reader

I was living in Manhattan when the fancy Chase Sapphire came out. It was genuinely shocking to me how many people I knew switched to Chase just to get the new card design. To be fair, it did look and feel exponentially better than any other cards around at the time.

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Remember the Amex Platinum scene in American Psycho?

I chose amex cash magnet out of a sea of otherwise equivalent 1.5% cashback cards for pretty much the same reason. kinda makes me wonder why most credit cards have such boring and even ugly designs. a conservative design can still be appealing, and it's not like graphic designers are prohibitively expensive to employ.

Citi Double Cashback is 2%

I know, but it had lower approval odds for me at the time. I've also heard a lot of bad things about that specific card, mainly stories of overly aggressive fraud protection.

They demolished a lot of the benefits though a few years ago.

I'm too practical, to me a fancy expensive looking card is just a fraud magnet.

Chase cards are fraud magnets. The bin is well-known, and Chase is short on card numbers, so people have actually brute-forced credit card numbers. Then they validate them by signing up for free trials of services using credit cards.

Brute forcing died a long time ago. There aren't any services left that don't require a CVV.

Chase is also the only major bank that still prints the entire 16 digit account number on every statement. Anyone without e-statements is a ripe target for mailbox thieves who now have the full name, address and card number.

that's not a valid concern as far as real life ux goes. the card issuer deals with any fraud.

these cards aren't uncommon, at least in high cost of living places because which are all dense cities.

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