

Ask HN: How to create my own debit card? - pastaking

I mean how to create a card that acts as a debit card that I can distribute to other people? It's like those student cards university use for on campus food, shops, and internal services. Students would deposit money in, and spend money from the card at participating locations.
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olefoo
You will need the following three advisors; a lawyer to tell you how to
structure it, an insurance broker to help you manage your risk, and a tax
accountant to make sure that you are keeping track of the money in a way that
the IRS deems acceptable.

Depending on the state you are operating in, you may need to file for a money
transmitter license. And yo and your advisors will need to go through
<http://www.fincen.gov/financial_institutions/msb/index.html> and determine
which, if any of the declarations you need to file and what compliance
policies your organization needs to put in place.

You'll also need to ensure that you have enough working capital to cover
potential withdrawals, and remember that you will have to keep the funds
segregated from the rest of your organizations business.

Oh, and your insurance broker will have to figure out how best to insure you
against all the normal risks that face a bank.

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eduardordm
This is how you do it: (I built exactly what you want)

\- Build a bank

\- Become a visa/mastercard issuer or create your own payment stack (which
will have 0 merchants)

How to build a bank (checking, no savings):

\- go to central bank website, you should be able to find the offices where
you can apply for that license, call them and ask for law firms that already
do that

\- it costs a few hundred thousand of dollars - fees and lawyer expenses

Now the hard part: To become a bank (the type you want) you need a lot of
money. 4 years ago it would take around 24mi to do that in the US. That money
is usually retained by the central bank. After having that retained you need
to retain at least 15% of all checking money in the central bank account,
which makes it even harder to get started.

Summarizing: get 30 million, call CB, the lawyer.

Now, the Pro-Tip: A lot of banks can act like a proxy. You create your firm
and reach an agreement with an existing bank to operate under it's license and
structure. simple.com is just that :D

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gee_totes
You're going to have to build your own magnetic stripe readers and writers and
encode the cards. Then figure out some software to make it work.

To get you started: <http://hackmiami.org/2008/12/21/magnetic-stripe-card-
reader/>

<http://stripesnoop.sourceforge.net/> (may be dead)

[http://flashingleds.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/magnetic-
swipe-...](http://flashingleds.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/magnetic-swipe-card-
spoofers/)

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natsu90
You might want to try these out, and let us know how's it going:
<https://www.ixaris.com/products/payment-partner>
<http://www.payoneer.com/PrepaidMC.aspx>
<https://www.payza.com/features/payza-prepaid-card>

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tait
Wow, totally orthogonal answers, both of which answer an interpretation of the
question you were asking. Were you asking (a) how to set up your own debit
card that works with the current system, or (b) how to MAKE your own card,
from scratch?

(I'm a guessin "(a)").

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georgemcbay
There are companies set up to offer white label debit cards. Using one of them
may be your best option but it depends quite a lot on exactly why you're doing
this which your original post doesn't cover in nearly enough detail.

