CardControl by Ondot is a mobile banking application that helps reduce credit card fraud and give customers more personalized control over their spending limits and habits. Â It’s for Google Android & Apple iPhone’s.
Features
- Location lock. Card will only be active when a purchase is made within a set range of your phone, if a purchase is made outside of this range the card will automatically be denied and you’ll be alerted on your phone.
- Merchant control. This allows you to specify which merchants/categories your card can make purchases with. For example, if you never make online purchases you can turn off eCommerce, that way if your card is stolen and somebody tries to use it online they will be unable to do so. Another example: you could lock your card from making purchases at fashion stores if you’re trying to stop buying unnecessary clothing items.
- Purchase limits. You can limit the amount that can be spent in total and for each specific category/merchant. For example, if you are wanting to reduce the amount you spend at coffee shops you can limit yourself to $100 per month – anything over that limit will be automatically denied. You could also set a limit of $100 over all categories if you’re giving your children a credit card as part of their allowance.
Partners
CardControl is an opt in system, meaning your card issuer needs to opt in otherwise you won’t be able to use the features of CardControl. Unfortunately not many banks are currently participating partners, below card issuers that are currently compatible:
- Lone Star National Bank
Our Verdict
CardControl seems like an extremely nifty application, it will help prevent fraudulent transactions which is good for both consumers, financial institutions and card processors a like. It’ll also help consumers dial in their expenses and only spend in categories that they’ve selected as high importance before their impulses take over at point of sale.
I originally thought that CardControl would have trouble getting card issuers on board as having greater control over their spending habits would lead to less spending from consumers (which isn’t what card issuers want, as people carrying a balance on high interest credit cards as extremely profitable). Although in their testing with Lone Star National Bank, this wasn’t the case. Card usage actually went up by 54% and card spend was up by 48%, presumably because consumers started using their Lone Star card almost exclusively due to these fine grained controls.
Hopefully the ideas behind this application go mainstream and card issuers allow more fine grained controls and better fraud protections. I personally won’t be downloading this application, but that’s purely because I’m not a customer of any financial institutions currently participating in the program.
Hat tip to GoBankingRates
How it’s so complicated all I wanted was to see my increased amount for withdrawal. Not these extras