
A Final Farewell - kreitje
https://getfinal.com/company-news/2017/12/06/a-final-farewell/
======
lewisl9029
That's too bad. I loved using Final.

I know Privacy [0] is one possible alternative, but it's debit based rather
than credit based like Final is, and they require linking a bank account by
username and password, which AFAIK makes you entirely liable for any
fraudulent activity for the account, so that's a non-starter for me. Anyone
aware of any other services that provide virtual cards like these?

[0] [https://privacy.com/](https://privacy.com/)

EDIT: just found out about Token [1], which seems similar. But the fact that
it makes you enter your phone number to get a link to the app seems rather
shady... I can't seem to find their app on the Play Store so I'm going to
assume they're iOS only and skip it. Can anyone comment on their experience
with the service?

[1] [https://jointoken.com/#slide1](https://jointoken.com/#slide1)

~~~
tejasm
Early Final adopter here. I liked the product but wasn't able to differentiate
between Final and other VCCs.

Bank of America and Citibank offer virtual credit card creation which is very
close to what Final does. Their UI is very clunky but does the trick without
worrying about the liability part.

~~~
atourgates
I was using Bank of America's ShopSafe system a decade ago. Remember all those
"Get a free Xbox for completing these 12 free trial offers" scams?

Well, it turned out that some of them weren't necessarily scams, and there
were whole forums dedicated to actually completing the offers, keeping proper
documentation and claiming the prizes.

Most of the free trial offers validated your credit card for the initial free
month, and then made it incredibly difficult to cancel the service. So I'd
just sign up with a ShopSafe number that was valid for 1 month with a $1
limit.

Typically, instead of actually shipping you the Xbox or whatever the prize
was, if you completed the offer they'd just send you a check. The year after I
got out of college when I had plenty of free time, I managed to get about
$1,200 thanks to those offers and ShopSafe.

It's not a feature I'd use enough to have it dictate my overall credit card
choice, but I'd love it if more issuers added to their products.

~~~
rkho
Ahhh the good old days. I'd have spreadsheets of when to cancel trial offers.
Probably earned about $20-30k in electronics and cash overall during Freshman
year in college.

~~~
OkGoDoIt
Me and my roommates did this as well. We did it so much that one of my
roommates actually got a legally threatening letter from on of the companies
behind most of them (Trilegent I think it was) telling him to stop because he
was abusing the system. Which was funny because they were so scammy to begin
with.

~~~
rkho
Yikes. The worst I got was being sent to collections for a teeth whitening
product that was designed to bill regardless of trial cancellation. I learned
a ton about negotiating with customer service departments during this time
too.

------
PostOnce
We're going to get to a point where no one is willing to invest any time or
money (as a consumer) into products sold by a startup, because they all vanish
quickly and with short or no notice. I'm already at that point.

It'd suck to be a stable startup with plenty of funds/cashflow in a similar
niche to a company closing like this, and have people not willing to try your
product because they're now too timid.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Only if those products are chained to a proprietary cloud offering, or
otherwise dependent on the entity staying in business.

Something like a credit card is, of course, vulnerable to what you say. But
the benefit to this sort of timidity is that companies making IoT things ought
to lean more heavily into ensuring that their products will work even if they
go under.

------
RickS
Thoughts on why this happened? I wish they were more forthcoming about the
causes. This is the corporate equivalent of ghosting on your tinder date.

~~~
Nicksil
> ghosting on your tinder date

What does this mean? Apologies if it's something obvious I should know; I'm
not cool anymore so this terminology escapes me. :)

~~~
snewk
"ghosting" just means ending all interaction without warning. not necessarily
in the context of a relationship. one can ghost a job, a friend, or even
someone selling things on craigslist.

 _" He ghosted me after finding out I have kids."_

~~~
toomanybeersies
Ghosting can also be situational.

For instance, you can ghost from a bar or party, which is essentially just
disappearing without saying goodbye and trying to avoid anyone noticing you
leaving. Also called an Irish Goodbye.

~~~
goliatone
FWIW in Spain is a French goodbye

~~~
rhizome
I've heard it as the Irish Goodbye as recently as the monologue of last week's
Saturday Night Live with Saorise Ronan!

------
discreditable
I emailed their support and they said they've been acquired by another company
but can't disclose the details.

~~~
throwawayfinal
my theory is that their main asset wasn't their consumers, or even that data,
but their ability to be a card processor and issuer (like the big banks). I
don't think there's very many of them, and the effort required to build that
is very time consuming and expensive.

~~~
maxerickson
The footer of their pages says their cards are issued by First Bank & Trust,
Brookings SD.

~~~
throwawayfinal
They have the ability to issue tokenized numbers, that's something that not
everyone can do.

TBH, I'm not deeply involved in payments, but what they're doing is extremely
unique and I could totally appreciate a larger company (such as a paypal
competitor like stripe) wanting a piece of what they're doing.

~~~
mbesto
Marqeta does this: [https://www.marqeta.com/](https://www.marqeta.com/)

------
provost
Had to look up their page (getfinal.com). Had I known about this product, I
probably would have embraced it. Wish the team the best of luck, and hope it
gets revived!

------
noncoml
I feel kind of guilty since I rarely used my card.

The points I would usually get from my other cards were better.

Also for online transactions, which was supposed to be the strong point of
Final, I never use my card on unreputable sites. But even if I did, disputing
transactions is so easy these days.

Sorry that you didn’t make it folks. Good luck in your future adventures.

~~~
Aloha
Yup.

Came here to say this.

Amex has a more compelling offering (and a better website), Discover offers
better rewards, same with pretty much every card I have.

------
ubuntuftw
This is such a shock to me! I've been a Final customer for a year or so now,
and I have absolutely loved their product. I told all of my friends about it.
I'm so sad to hear they're shutting down, and very curious as to why.

------
kreitje
For a credit card company their support was amazing. I had a few issues with
the 2fa SMS being delayed and they answered within a couple minutes.

------
crisopolis
That was fast (or slow, I guess)... I knew this was gonna happen with Final.

Now let's hope Privacy doesn't also decide to close one day. (It does just
virtual cards with your bank ACH backing it)

~~~
ikeboy
Privacy closed my account abruptly after refusing to process some disputes.
From my limited experience they don't appear to comply with the requirements
to run a payment network

------
kyledrake
This really, really sucks. I have a business credit card that I have to update
20+ sites for every time there's a compromised card issue, and I'd really love
to be able to use one card # for each business I work with. They were going to
launch a business card in the future but apparently that is now scrapped.

Are there any alternatives out there for doing this?

~~~
ChristianBundy
I've had a good experience with privacy.com, although I'm not super excited
that you have to give them your bank logins.

~~~
raarts
Really? You do? Rather weird for a company by that name.

------
discreditable
I received the same message. I'm a little disappointed that such a
notification would be sent via email without any verification on their
website, blog, or social media accounts.

If it's legit, I'm saddened. Final had a great idea in virtual cards. I hope
someone can explain why they are closing down.

------
Cu3PO42
I think this was a great idea, so I'm sad to see it go. I have prepaid credit
cards for potentially sketchy sites and one "main" credit card that I use for
most of my payments online. This could probably have reduced the
"administration" overhead involved.

Is anyone aware of a similar offering that is available in Germany? I wouldn't
think so, after all most people here don't even have a credit card. We do have
debit/ATM cards, but they use a separate payment network developed in German
and are not interoperable with Visa/MasterCard.

On that note, I wouldn't mind not getting any benefits since most cards here
don't offer any notable ones either. This is probably a direct consequence of
there being a pretty strict cap on transaction fees (iirc 0.3% on credit
cards).

------
grepthisab
I interviewed with them very very recently. I guess not getting the job was a
good thing!

~~~
bm1362
Yeah I also met with them but they were waiting to hear back about headcount.
It’s too bad, there product was useful.

------
FabioFleitas
Anyone know how this closing could affect your credit if you were a Final
customer?

~~~
el_benhameen
Probably not much as long as you were in good standing. It'll reduce your
average length of credit by a bit, but afaik having one account with a short
age probably won't hit you more than a few points for a little while.

------
purplezooey
I would have used Final if it were a debit card. Didn't want another credit
card and was bummed to see that's what it was.

------
corford
I never used Final but from a quick skim it seems like Revolut cover a lot of
what they did (and more).

------
ubuntuftw
Blog post: [https://getfinal.com/company-news/2017/12/06/a-final-
farewel...](https://getfinal.com/company-news/2017/12/06/a-final-farewell/)

~~~
kreitje
Wow it must have just went up. I looked and saw nothing.

~~~
sctb
Thanks! We've updated the link from [http://mailchi.mp/27332f46a92e/final-
will-be-closing-all-acc...](http://mailchi.mp/27332f46a92e/final-will-be-
closing-all-accounts).

------
floren
A contender for
[https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/](https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/)
?

~~~
michaelbuckbee
That's more for acquihires.

~~~
floren
discreditable's comment says that they were in fact acquired, although with a
username like that who knows ;)

~~~
ryandrake
Plus they mentioned their "journey" twice. That's got to count for something
:)

