“Final” Credit Card Coming Soon – Increased Security & Budgeting Tools

When I first saw the marketing for Final Credit Card I thought it was another “All In One Credit Card” such as Coin or Stratos (or Plastc, Wallby, Swyp) but it turns out this isn’t the case and Final will actually extend you credit themselves and act as a credit card issuer (unless this is just a white labelled product with an undisclosed partner).

How It Works

Final’s main selling point is security. The basic premise is that for each credit card transaction you make, Final can create a unique credit card number and use that. This means if financial data is compromised from a specific merchant Final can shut down that number and replace it with a new number (meaning that it’ll continue to work for on going payments).

Final gives you the flexibility on how/when credit card numbers are generated, for example:

• You can create a single use credit card number. This number will no longer be valid after it’s used once, this is especially useful if you want to sign up for a free trial or purchase a item from a company with a lax security record.
• You can create a multi use credit card number and assign specific rules to this number.
• You can create spending limits for certain merchants. Are you spending too much at Starbucks? You could put a spending limit of $75 on Starbucks purchases per month and if you go over that limit you’ll be notified.

Other Features

• EMV Chip + PIN. Unlike other all in one cards, Final will be issued with an EMV chip and PIN functionality as default. In the F.A.Q’s Final even mention the massive fraud reduction that this technology causes.
• Ability to turn physical Final card on/off and tie it to your phone. Final will have the ability to have the card deactivated if it’s lost or stolen, users will also be able to automatically deactivate the card if it’s beyond a set distance from your smart phone.
• Budgeting tools. Final gives you a thorough break down of where you’re spending money and how your spending it. For example it’ll show you how much has been spent online vs in person, one of purchases vs recurring and more.

Downsides

There are a number of downsides to this card, the biggest is that it’s not currently available. They are hoping to make it available “sometime in 2015” but who knows if they’ll meet that deadline or not. There are no fees or interest rates currently presented and it’s unclear if they will or won’t offer a rewards program (it’s still to be decided).

At the moment you can only sign up to be part of the Beta testing by entering your e-mail. You can refer friends to the Beta testing as well and the more you refer the higher up the list you will go.

Feel free to use reader Matt’s referral link if you’d like.

Final Thoughts

For me, there isn’t a lot of new technology that Final is offering. Generating unique credit card numbers has been around for awhile now and something the larger card issuers have played with in the past (sometimes called a controlled payment number), the same can be said with location based locking & spending limits. Chip + PIN cards are coming, it’s just going to take a long time for it to finally happen.

I’d really like to see more card issuers use these different types of technology (especially improving smart phone applications so I can de-active cards and tie them to my phone’s location) but for me the benefits of Final don’t outweigh the negative. It’s not clear if they will offer a rewards program (the F.A.Q says TBD) and I imagine if they do it won’t be competitive with the best cards out there. It’s also not clear what their fee structure will be and the interest rates they charge or if they will offer high enough credit limits to use this as your sole card.

There is no doubt that a product like this will attract some cardholders, data breaches have become a major issue in 2014 & into 2015 as well. I can’t see that problem going away anytime soon, I do hope that some of the features that Final offers will become standard on all credit cards but I don’t think the value of these security benefits outweighs a low fee high rewards credit card with good benefits for most consumers.

What are your thoughts on Final? Let me know the comments.

Hat tip to Matt, if you find this product interesting feel free to use his referral link