[Update 7/8/20: Privacy.com has brought back their $5 signup offer where the new member gets $5 to use toward their first purchase just for signing up (I believe you have to link a bank too). The referrer also gets $5 as well. Appreciate if you use my referral link to signup.]
Privacy.com Review
Direct Link (contains my referral)
Privacy.com is a free service which allows consumers to make payments online safely and anonymously. For security or privacy reasons, people don’t always want to use their regular payment methods online and expose their card/bank details, name, and address to random online vendors.
On a basic level, the site is another option for issuing virtual card numbers for online use, a service offered by banks like Citi and Bank of America, see List of Banks Offering Virtual Account Numbers. Privacy uses the Visa network for their virtual cards, issued by Customers Bank.
Privacy.com takes the virtual card idea to a new level in two ways:
- Privacy allows more customization in the virtual account number with options to close, edit, or pause each virtual card. You can even customize how the charge shows up on your bank statement, with a few options to choose from.
- You can use any name, address, and phone number with your Privacy virtual card. This can be useful in cases where you don’t want to give out your address, and it might be helpful for some international purchases since you can even use a foreign address. Contrast this with Citi or BofA’s system which probably tie to your name and billing address.
$5 Referral Bonus
If you signup using a referral link, you’ll get a $5 bonus to start with which you can spend down using a virtual card generated in your Privacy account. To get the $5 bonus, you’ll have to complete the signup and link a bank. Your first $5 in spend automatically will pull from the $5 bonus and not from your bank.
The referrer also gets $5. Here’s my referral link. Or find and share referrals on this dedicated page.
You can find your own referral link in the Refer Friends tab in the bar at the top of the page under Refer Friends. Please don’t leave any referrals in the comments of this post, rather leave them on the dedicated page.
How it Works
Find a referral link for signup so that you’ll get the $5 bonus, and signup with your email address and a password. Add your bank as the funding source of the account and then you can generate virtual card numbers.
Privacy does not allow you to pay with a credit card, you need to input a bank account as the payment method. The bank is linked using the bank login details. (Reader Misha tells us that they may be able to add your bank with just the routing/account number if you contact support and request this specifically.)
Create a new card using the New Card tab in the top bar. No need to set any address when creating the card, just use any name/address you wish when checking out online and it’ll work.
You can close out, edit, or pause any existing virtual cards by clicking on the card in the Cards part of the page. Go to (your name) > Account to adjust the settings for Notifications, Two-Factor Authentication, and how the transaction should appear on your bank statement (‘Privacy.come’ or ‘H&H Hardware’ or ‘Smileys Corner Store’ or ‘NSA Gift Shop’).
You can create up to 12 cards per 24 hours and can spend up to $1,000/day and $2,000/month. If you’re using Privacy a lot, you might find useful the Chrome extension which makes it easy to generate card numbers automatically in the browser.
Offers
Privacy.com offers money-back offers at select retailers, e.g. spend $50 at Nordstrom and get $5 back. You can find these offers in the Offers tab on the website. Be sure to activate the offer before using it, then use a Privacy.com virtual card number and they’ll deduct the offer amount off your total charge.
Cash Back
Privacy.com is also trying a cash back program where you get cash back on each purchase. Typically this is 1% back on all your spend. Check the Cashback tab for more details.
Our Verdict
Privacy.com is a similar idea to the virtual card numbers offered by Citi and Bank of America. Privacy takes this to next level with customizations and anonymity features. It’ll be especially useful for a lot of us who like to signup for various promos which ask for a card and address.
You may not want to use Privacy for large purchases due the the lack of rich credit card rewards on the purchase, yet for the right usage it can be helpful. For example, if you are registering a web domain to rack up some free Swagbucks, using a Privacy card means your name and maybe even address is not out there in public. Certain charity donations which are known to generate lots of spam mail; you might be able to make up a fake address and save yourself the spam.
The $5 bonus is a nice little incentive to this a try. I tested it out by purchasing a $1 Amazon gift card purchase using a random name/address with the Privacy card number, and the purchase went through without a hitch. I intend to use Privacy in the future for various trial signups which are done virtually to save myself from spam and the possibility of being charged again.
Is the referral program dead?
When I go to Docs link it just redirects to home page
Tried to sign up for the privacy.com service, but website declined my regional bank debit card. No explanation, so I’ve emailed CS. I don’t necessarily want to give my bank credentials, so if the debit card doesn’t work, I’ll forget it.
Also, saw that they’ve changed their card type from a debit to a “charge card”…I assume a virtual credit card. That should help with some recurring billing merchants who avoid prepaid debit cards.
“Privacy.com cards have historically been debit cards. We have upgraded the card type you use with Privacy.com to a charge card. While our new Privacy Cards are technically charge cards, they work just as they always have.”
Just read the review. Can you set an end date for the card, or just a dollar limit? The end date is helpful for avoiding auto renewal subscriptions.
I’m still banned from this service, which makes no sense to me. I applied over two years ago, never even used the account, and they shut it down. I tried to get it reopened this week, and this is what they responded with:
“After a careful review process, we have decided to suspend your Privacy Account due to activity that is unsupported or in violation of our terms of service.
Your connected funding source has been removed, and all open Cards associated with your account have been disabled for your security. Pending transactions will be allowed to settle, and any refunds in progress will be sent to your funding source if our system receives them. Please note that any additional accounts created will also be suspended.
While we wish we could provide you with more information, we are unable to share any details about the many factors that go into these decisions because of the security-conscious nature of our business.”
– There are only two other companies that I can think of that don’t want anything to do with me… Discover, and Ingo. I am going to take a guess that they must partner with one of the two.
They banned me too after receiving a bunch of referrals bonuses. Tried emailing them, they responded like what they wrote to you.
I never even got to use it, or refer others to them.
Just signed up using Chuck’s link, the $5 sign up bonus is still valid, they allow debit card or bank login as funding method, and allow only one funding source per account. Debit card need to be Visa or Master personal card, and appear to be limited in other ways, they do not support these debit cards I tried: PPBDC, Discover, Stash, and a local credit union; successes with debit card from a major national bank.
Oxygen debit card is not supported either.
Oxygen lets you do your own Virtual debit card from their app… I guess that doesn’t get you a fake address though.
I was trying to do double layers 😉
This one should be obvious, but they don’t support prepaid cards.
anyone knows if privacy.com will code as online purchase on my boa 3% online category?
They don’t take credit cards lol
thank you for the info TB!
Looks like their cards are rejected by online newspapers because “This behavior is prohibited on our system to prevent exploitation of new customer or referral promotions. […]”
Flash news: “That’s why we signed up for!”.
Useless. Closed.
I am only getting option to link debit card as source of funding. I do not see anywhere to link bank account. Not sure if I am missing something.
Well, these clowns are doing “scheduled maintenance” on a Thursday morning 7am-9am…
Can you really use any address for the virtual card? I remember checking a similar service before (dunno if it was this one specifically) and while you could use any name, the physical address was always their corporate hq’s. I can foresee problems if retailers block this exact detail.