boling11

(I work at Privacy.com)

I'm super sorry for the inconvenience and for the limited lead time. Unfortunately, this change wasn’t fully within our control and was required by our card partners.

It's been pretty widely reported that Yodlee sells user data to hedge funds and others. It's the main reason we didn't go with them.

(I work for Privacy.com)

We do use the Plaid Link widget (as do most other fintechs in the US). We don't touch credentials or handle the bank login page.

Commentary about the state of the US banking system aside, Plaid is pretty much the industry standard way to do instant bank account verifications today. However, we also have options to link with debit card and account / routing number if you're not comfortable with the Plaid route (totally understandable).

PRIVACY.COM | Software Engineer | NEW YORK (NYC) | $90-140K, 0.1 - 1% equity | ONSITE, FULL-TIME

We’ve built a secure way to pay online without giving away your personally identifiable information (PII) or credit card number. We're a small team of 16, moving millions in transaction volume, generating significant revenue, and backed by top-tier investors. In two years since launching, we've saved users over $250 million in unauthorized and unwanted transactions.

A few things we're working on now:

  -  Improving our fraud modeling and ML classifiers that detect anomalous behavior and prevent fraud
  -  Updates to our real-time transaction processing engine
  -  Building out growth hooks, A/B testing and supporting growth and retention efforts
  -  Unstructured data challenges around improving our browser extension performance

  -  2+ years of experience shipping code in a production environment
  -  Proficiency in at least one language - we use NodeJS / Python / C++ / Java / SQL
  -  An understanding of the balance between perfection and shipping quickly
  -  An understanding that code is written as much for humans to read and maintain as it is for machines to interpret
  -  Proven ownership of the features from start to finish
  -  Deep understanding of algorithms, systems, and design

  -  Competitive compensation and meaningful equity 
  -  Medical / dental / vision coverage 
  -  Snacks, stocked fridge, and pantry 
  -  Choose your own Apple equipment 
  -  Commuter Benefits 
  -  Flexible vacation policy; take time when you need it 
  -  Our office is located in a beautiful loft in Chinatown near most trains 
  -  3% cash back on all purchases with Privacy cards

Yeah - that makes sense. We're working this into our FAQ / help desk copy, but it should be more prominent.

We're releasing it slowly for risk management reasons (so not everyone sees it). Happy to activate it manually on your account though if you'd like.

Hey there! One of the Privacy.com cofounders here.

I hear you on the login concern. It was something we launched with and releasing new bank flows is tricky, so we've been doing so slowly.

That said, we do have alternative flows (including micro-deposits). If you're open to giving us another chance, drop me a note (bo@privacy.com), and I'd be happy to set you up.

Hey there! One of the Privacy.com cofounders here.

I hear you on the login concern. We've been rolling out alternative flows (including micro-deposits). If you're open to giving us another shot, drop me a note bo@privacy.com, and I'd be happy to set you up.

Privacy.com | Senior Software Engineer | FULL-TIME | New York, NY (NYC / Brooklyn) | ONSITE | $120k - $160k (USD), 0.1 - 1% equity

Come help us build and scale Privacy.com. We're building the world's safest and easiest way to pay online. In less than two years since launch, we've saved users over $100,000,000 in unauthorized and unwanted transactions.

About Us

Privacy is a new way to transact without sharing your personally identifiable information or credit card number. Generate a new card number for every purchase with just 1 click. You don’t use the same password everywhere, why use the same card number?

We're a rapidly growing, fintech company backed by tier 1 investors expanding our engineering team to keep pace with our growth. We believe that there is an enormous opportunity to improve the lives of millions of people by building financial tools that are both safe and delightful to use.

As an early team member, you will make a significant impact on both the product and culture. You'll have the chance to work directly with everyone in the company on a multitude of interesting technical challenges across payment processing, banking APIs, fraud detection, scale, and predictive analytics.

Why apply?

  -  Competitive compensation and equity 
  -  Medical / dental / vision coverage
  -  Snacks, stocked fridge, and pantry
  -  Choose your own Apple equipment
  -  Pet friendly office
  -  Commuter Benefits
  -  Flexible vacation policy; take time when you need it
  -  Our office is located in a beautiful loft in downtown NYC near most trains

Senior Frontend Engineer: https://angel.co/privacy-com/jobs/361133-senior-frontend-eng...

Senior Backend Engineer: https://angel.co/privacy-com/jobs/172194-software-engineer

Disclosure: I work for privacy.com

You can use pseudonymous billing info for the transaction. We then debit your underlying account afterwards.

Just out of curiosity, what feels shady about ProtonMail?

Awesome! Dev.to is a really nice community - I’m excited to see how this goes :).

Privacy.com | Software Engineer / Senior Backend Engineer | FULL-TIME | New York, NY (NYC) | ONSITE | $100k - $140k (USD), 0.1 - 1% equity

Come help us build and scale Privacy.com. We're building the world's safest and easiest way to pay online. In less than two years since launch, we've saved users over $100,000,000 in unauthorized and unwanted transactions.

About Us

Privacy is a new way to transact without sharing your personally identifiable information or credit card number. Generate a new card number for every purchase with just 1 click. You don’t use the same password everywhere, why use the same card number?

We're a rapidly growing, fintech company backed by tier 1 investors expanding our engineering team to keep pace with our growth. We believe that there is an enormous opportunity to improve the lives of millions of people by building financial tools that are both safe and delightful to use.

As an early team member, you will make a significant impact on both the product and culture. You'll have the chance to work directly with everyone in the company on a multitude of interesting technical challenges across payment processing, banking APIs, fraud detection, scale, and predictive analytics.

Why apply?

  -  Competitive compensation and equity 
  -  Medical / dental / vision coverage
  -  Snacks, stocked fridge, and pantry
  -  Choose your own Apple equipment
  -  Pet friendly office
  -  Commuter Benefits
  -  Flexible vacation policy; take time when you need it
  -  Our office is located in a beautiful loft in downtown NYC near most trains

Software Engineer: https://angel.co/privacy-com/jobs/172194-software-engineer

Senior Backend Engineer: https://angel.co/privacy-com/jobs/403881-senior-backend-engi...

Apply to ycombinator?

I've really been enjoying Taskade.

A lot of the stuff out there suffers from feature bloat and too much complexity.

I like Taskade because it's light weight and fast, and it's great for teams.

They’re performed after the fact.

Hey there!

I'm one of the founders. Just wanted to hop in here and clarify our current practices.

We do not sell any data to third parties (anonymized or not). We’re never going to do it for direct marketing purposes or anything like that.

The intent behind the non-personally identified information sharing clause is to potentially provide breach notification warnings to merchants:

Example: if a large number of locked cards were used at merchant X, and then subsequently stolen from merchant X, and used at other merchants, we could notify merchant X and our customers that shopped at merchant X (likely before anyone else in the ecosystem knew).

This is not a service we're planning to provide in the near term. Any other information we collect is solely for the purposes of fraud prevention, not marketing.

I definitely hear you on the language in the policy though, and it is something we intend to tighten up

We're rolling out straight cashback (up to 5% at select partners) - simple and no hoops to jump through. It's still in the works, but you can join the waitlist at cashback.privacy.com.

Force post transactions are literally when a merchant takes the money of the account without requesting authorization, so there is no opportunity to decline the transaction.

This very rarely happens. You won't see any big merchants like Spotify or Netflix doing this because you closed a card to cancel a subscription.

Speaking broadly, there is often some type of fraud, suspicious activity, or a serious loss potential for merchants to resort to this.

Examples - if you rent a car and don't return it, borrow books and don't return them, or abuse generous return policies (return items that are clearly not what you purchased).

All that said, even if we don't win the chargeback, we still often credit the user out of pocket in the interest of giving the user the benefit of the doubt.

Yes, we take a portion of the merchant fee (similar to regular debit or credit cards).

We don’t monetize by selling your data.

Hi there! We use Plaid for instant bank account verification and for balance information (to ensure we don't accidentally trigger an overdraft). We don't utilize the Income / Assets / Employment APIs. We don't use them for ACH - We build our own NACHA files in house.

Plaid itself takes user privacy really seriously (part of the reason why we're working with them). They don't resell any of your sensitive data.

A secondary checking account is A-Ok with us. Many of our users do this. The only thing I would say is to be careful to use a bank that doesn't assess overdraft fees. We also are allowing micro-deposits for our more security conscious users on a limited basis (drop me a line bo@privacy.com and I'll set you up). Lastly, card top ups is something we're also looking hard at.

As you can tell, unfortunately there isn't a perfect solution yet - we're trying to be a part of that solution.

We'd love to as well! Unfortunately we don't have a public timeframe we can share yet :(.

Uh oh - thanks for the heads up. Could you share what version of FireFox / OS you're on to help us repro?

We're working on being competitive here :).

I'm really sorry to hear about the negative experience. This is surprising to me, and I’d be happy to look into the specific case - can you drop me a note at bo@privacy.com?

Thank you!

Hey there! I'm really sorry to hear about the negative experience.

I can't speak to a specific case on a public forum. However, you are correct that in very rare cases, merchants can push through transactions without prior authorization - it's against card network rules, and it’s typically a simple chargeback to win. Even in cases where we don’t win, we typically cover out of pocket.

I’m happy to look into this. Can you shoot me a note at bo@privacy.com?

Thanks for the heads up! Fixed :).

Hey HN! One of the founders here. We're really excited to share this today. It's just a start, but this is something we’ve wanted to release for a long time now :).

We believe that data portability and an open ecosystem will be table stakes for all fintech companies. You should have granular, differential control of your data. You should be able to grant access to specific functions or aspects of your financial account without wholesale sharing your account login information. You should be able to verify your identity without sharing other personal information.

We ultimately intend for this API to be full read / write capable, including the ability to read transaction data, set rules programmatically, verify identity, create & manage virtual numbers, and transfer funds.

That said, security is core to what we do at Privacy.com and this extends to our API. We want to empower people to build applications on top of our API that delight users, without compromising their privacy or security. We would really value your feedback as a user, developer, or information security professional!

PRIVACY.COM | NEW YORK (NYC), BROOKLYN | $90-140K, 0.1 - 2% equity | ONSITE, FULL-TIME

We’ve built a secure way to pay online without giving away your personally identifiable information (PII) or credit card number. We're a small team (10), moving millions in transaction volume, generating significant revenue, and backed by top-tier investors. As one of our early engineering hires, you’ll have the opportunity to make a impact on both the product and culture of the company.

Some things we’re working on now:

- Improving our fraud modeling and ML classifiers that detect anomalous behavior and prevent fraud

- Building out growth hooks, A/B testing and optimizing funnels

- Updates to our real-time Visa transaction processing system where requests must be responded to in milliseconds

What we’re looking for:

- Ability to write clear, maintainable, thoughtfully commented code

- Can-do mentality, with the willingness to wear a sysadmin or devops hat when necessary

- Proficiency with javascript preferred but not required (our stack is mostly js with some java, c++ and python)

- 2+ years of real-world experience shipping code

If this job piques your interest, drop me a line: bo@privacy.com!

Marc isn't saying you should focus on networking at the seed stage. You should focus on building + customers and just not try to raise your seed from a16z.

a16z isn't a seed focused fund. They prefer waiting for more proof points, and they're willing to pay a premium for that (Series B).