If the future of money is digital, we need a quick way to exchange money between people, not just stores.
I love the idea of an E-Wallet. The only problem is it's only useful when you make purchases online or in stores. When it comes to paying from person to person, our options are still pretty limited.
Other than PayPal, there are virtually no effective ways to pay individuals, but even PayPal has a lot of limits, because the recipient needs to have a PayPal account and share their email address with you.
Why Paying Bills With a Check is Not Secure.
People go out of their way to shred anything with their account number, but they forget about the most obvious document, a check.
I know a lot of people who refuse to use the Internet to pay their bills. To them, there's no substitute for the "Security" of hand writing their checks, and putting them into an envelope. After all, everyone knows how insecure the "InterWeb" can be... Right?
The truth is, every time you hand somebody a check, you are not only giving them your bank account, but everything they need to take advantage of it, including your name, address, and even the routing number.
Isn't it a pain in the neck when a stored credit card expires and you have to update dozens of accounts?
Just about everyone today has at least a few bills that are automatically paid by a stored debit or credit card number. In fact, for a lot of people, they rarely need to write a physical check, because they can pay just about every bill from a stored card number.
Unfortunately, stored cards have expiration dates, and from time to time a bank will send out new cards even before the expiration dates. For example, my bank changed their logo a few years ago, so they issued new cards, and they sent another replacement when they incorporated support for the new chip based security.
Wouldn't it be great if you could write checks from your PayPal balance?
Every day, millions of people receive payments from PayPal, but unless they transfer it to their bank, they can only access it using a debit card. That's pretty strange when you think of it because PayPal is just like an online checking account.
So if you want to pay a bill with PayPal or give cash to somebody who doesn't have a PayPal account, you need to transfer it to your bank before you can write a check. For some banks, this could take a few days.
Shredding credit card statements can't protect you from stolen mail.
It's always struck me as odd that anyone who gets their hands on your mail has access to your actual account numbers Credit card statements normally show the entire card number, and checking account statements show your bank account numbers. If a thief steals your checking account statement from your mailbox, they have everything they need to print checks in your name.
Prevent Forced Access to Your Accounts.
From time to time, I hear stories on the news about people who were robbed at an ATM. I often wondered if some of those thefts could've been avoided by using a fake ATM PIN.
If a thief followed you to the bank and demanded you take out a large sum, wouldn't it be great if you had a secret second PIN that could prevent them from getting away with it?
Instead of entering your real PIN, you enter the fake one, and it displays a random balance less than $40, allowing you to only take out $20... and silently calls the police.
Receipts In The Cloud, Linked to Loyalty Cards.
I hate looking for my receipts!
Today's inspiration came from two places, PetSmart, and Neat Receipts.
PetSmart recently started offering customers the option to get an emailed receipt. This is not only a way to save paper, but a great way to archive your receipts. It's pretty simple. Since they already have your email address, they send your receipt as a PDF.
Neat Receipts is a service that lets you scan your receipts into the cloud, then run reports you can use to track expenses.
Wouldn't it be great if you could access ALL of your receipts from every store you visit, without scanning?
Welcome to Billy Ray Valentine's Half Price Persian Rug Site. Please enter your credit card here.
Let's face it, we all love to hunt for bargains online, but it's hard to tell which sites you can trust enough to give your credit card number to. Not only do you risk paying for something that never arrives, but there's a good chance the site itself could be a complete hoax designed to steal credit card numbers.
Security Deposits As An Alternative to Minimum Daily Balance.
Here's how banks can offer an alternative to minimum balance maintenance fees.
One of the worst things about "Free Checking", is that banks find all sorts of ways of charging fees. For example, many banks charge a monthly fee whenever your balance drops below a pre-set amount, even if it only drops to that point one day in the month.
This has always bugged me, because that basically means that there's a portion of your money that you can never quite have access to. So even when you have $1100 in the account, you really only have $1000 you can touch. The bank wins whether they charge the fee or not, because if a million people never touch that remaining $100, they have $100 million more liquid funds to lend out on any given day.
You're on your way back from Walmart. You dropped your credit card. That's okay. Nobody can use it but you.
Two Step Credit Cards could eliminate almost all fraudulent credit card transactions. Really.
The key to protecting credit cards from fraudulent transactions is to somehow guarantee that the card owner is the only person who can use the card. So how can we do that, especially now that many stores don't even require a signature for small transactions?
What's worse than getting a $35 overdraft fee for a $5 debit card purchase?
Realizing they intentionally rigged their system to make it happen.
Banks are wonderful institutions. They are also a business trying to increase profits. I'm an Entrepreneur, so I'm not against that. What bothers me is that they don't play fair, because they intentionally process your transactions by sorting the highest charges first, to increase the number of overdraft fees..
What's the difference between sorting charges Lowest First vs Highest First?
1. Your checking account has $85 when you start your day.
2. You purchase 3 low priced items totalling $42, then charge a $100 item.
Does this text message conversation sound familiar?
Parent: Didn't I just send you money?
Student: SPENT IT... PLEASE SEND MORE!
Parent: Okay, but try to pace yourself this time. This is the third time you've gone over your budget this semester.
Student: Thank U soooo much! Love U.
First of all, college students need to understand that writing "Love U" makes them look like they're still in grade school, but that should be the subject of another Idea Of The Day.
Quick question, how many times would it take to crack the typical 4 digit PIN number?
Did you guess 9999? Believe it or not, there are less than 565 VERY common PIN numbers.
Why are there less than 565 popular PIN numbers?
A lot of people pick a birthday. That's 365 possible combinations, 12 possible combinations for the first two digits 01-12, and 31 possible combinations for the second 2 digits. Even worse, some use the year of their birth.
What are the other 200?
A lot of people who don't use dates, use repeating 2 digit numbers, like their birth day, such as 0505, or year such as 7575.
The final 100 are years. Since there aren't many people over 100, that's only another 100 possible choices.