Your most used credit/debit card has…
[You can use the final option for Apple/Google/Samsung pay on your mobile/cellular, or if you use a wearable payment device]
P.S. By "account number", in this case I mean card number (Amex, Discover, MasterCard, UnionPay, Visa, etc. number). Not your bank account number.
I wonder if things have already shifted since last time. 🤔
https://velocipederider.com/@ruari/113142278460382792
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One of my own numberless† cards, for those that have not seen such things before. Other companies that offer them include Chase (UK) and also the Apple card.
And yes this is a real, usable card and no I did not remove anything. This is how it is issued.
† It has a number obviously, just not printed on the card. I can access it though the app and website associated with my account and I also store it in my password manager for convenience.
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Here is an old image of more of my cards. I switched some of them since this picture but still none have any card account number on the front, unlike my cards further in the past.
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The obvious advantage of stripping the numbers off the front (or entirety) of the card is for security/privacy. If they are seen† it is not possible for a nefarious person to memorise or quickly photograph the number.
Indeed I cannot think of any good reason for modern cards to continue to print the number across the front. If your bank does, maybe tell them to stop it.
† Just a few years back I could not have posted a picture like this on social media without compromising my account details.
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Having an embossed card seems particularly stupid in 2025. Those old "Knuckle Busters" cannot be used anywhere, anymore. So there is no advantage to them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card_imprinter
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Just to clarify one point, card imprinters might now be pointless but I do personally think they were a brilliant solution at the time. They are so much quicker (and more accurate) at recording the account details than someone handwritting them out. So while their time has come and gone, hats off to whichever individual(s) that came up with this idea in the first place. It was a brilliant little hack.
[And yes I am using "hack" in it's more traditional sense]
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I'm also curious if anyone has a physical payment card without a magnetic stripe.
Technically I do but I am not sure it counts as it is a microcard.
Let's see if anyone else does. Do you have a full size credit/debit card which came without any magnetic stripe?
[If you have such a card and if you don't mind, name the bank/fintech company in the comments below]
https://www.mastercard.com/news/perspectives/2021/magnetic-stripe/
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P.S. For anyone curious about my reference to a microcard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ3m8LW5plw
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Sadly one of the providers I use that used to issue micro payment cards has dropped them from their offerings (Bank Norwegian/Nordax). I still have a microcard with them and it works but they will not issue new ones in the future. They are commiting further to mobile and smartwatch payments instead.
That is a real shame IMHO but on the flipside I have at least one other provider where they are still continuing to support them going forward (for now at least).
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@ruari
If all cards were still embossed then the non connected backup might have a place.
None out of several cards in my wallet are embossed.
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@boxofrain I was on a plane recently and bought a drink. I had no internet access and honestly I do not think the terminals they used did either. I normally get instant notifications on my phone for payments I make on certain cards (including the one I used). My phone notified me two days later of that transaction. Looking at my account, the payment was recorded on the 23rd but I flew on the 21st. Those airline terminals can clearly take payments offline for later processing.
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@boxofrain Some of these planes do have internet access but even then it tends to go in and out of service. Thus their terminals would need to have been designed this way because they cannot just stop processing payments from customers when outages are so frequent.
So we no longer need the card imprinters, even for outages/offline payments, as long as internet connectivity is eventually restored.
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@boxofrain I suspect most terminals cannot do this and/or most companies are not allowed to process payments in this way. I assume that the airlines have negotiated something special with the banks due to their situation with network access being intermittent. But it shows… it is possible. We do not need the old tech.
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@ruari @boxofrain my understanding (I work in a payments related industry) is that it's not any sort of special deal the airlines have. It's just that an acquirer doesn't want to do the offline transaction if they can help it, because there's more chance of them being on the hook for costs if the transaction is rejected.
So if someone takes your card and you cancel it, when they try to use it, the acquirer will ask the card issuer if the transaction is legit and the issuer will say no, transaction denied. But if the thief gets on a plane before you cancel it, their transactions will go through and ultimately it's the acquirer (the airlines bank) that eats the loss.
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@Scmbradley Ok so in summary pretty much any business could do the initial transaction offline but they have to swallow the risk.
However that would also be true (need to swallow the risk) with a card imprinter (assuming that was even allowed). So in the modern world the imprinter offers no real advantage.
@boxofrain
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@ruari
I get all that.
But one can imagine the terminals not working for one reason or another.
But once cards don’t have embossed numbers - as they now mostly don’t at least in Europe - then the mechanical readers really don’t make any sense.
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@boxofrain I see your argument that it works both ways. Without embossing it is not possible to use old tech. But that old tech has other problems. It records the number on the receipt. Modern receipts never show the full number. If you lose your receipt on the ground or the merchant does not look after their copy well, someone can copy the details
The payment processors do not want that old tech to work because it is not secure. So these were always going away. So embossing is now pointless.
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@ruari And speaking of these, we had similar at a store I worked at for the times the magnetic stripe stopped working. I remember coming across a discover card that was the first card I saw without the embossed numbers.
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@linnefaulk Yeah it in the past but you will note from the wikipedia article I linked to that card imprinters stopped being accepted anywhere in the 2020s, so there would be no use pulling them out now. The banks would not accept payments taken in this way anymore.
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@ruari wow I didn't know that was the reason for embossed cards 😮
I'd just assumed they were just there for style or something 😅
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@badrihippo Well I am old enough to recall seeing them used.
At least I recall my parents handing over cards to be imprinted this way. I don't think I have ever used one with my own cards that I recall.
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@badrihippo Credit Cards are full of redundant methods for getting account information off them
In Norway these days it is 90% contactless with the very occasionally insert of the chip. You can remove all 3 of the above and it would not really matter at all.
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@badrihippo As you see from my first image at least one of my cards is numberless. It has a number associated but it is not written on the card anywhere.
However it still has the mag stripe which cannot be used anywhere in Norway. So still at least one redundant thing remains.
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text/gemini
