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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@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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text/gemini
