BIRMINGHAM, Ala.—Credit card startup Final, which is focused on combating fraud online and off while giving consumers more control over their spending, has raised $1 million in seed funding from investors.
Final is an EMV-based credit card that also offers consumers the ability to generate multiple, unique numbers that can be used with individual retailers.
Bill Hardekopf, CEO of LowCards.com here, pointed out that concept is not new. “But what makes it different from others that had offered temporary numbers in the past, is that they can be established for both individual merchants and one-off transactions.
For example, Final customers could create a card number that works just for all their purchases on Amazon.com. And then, thanks to the web and mobile applications, consumers can track their various accounts and subscriptions, setting specific rules for each.
“Consumers could set dollar amount limits on one card number, for instance, or could cancel a specific card number in order to end a relationship with a merchant without affecting others. This system can also help in the event of a data breach,” he said.
According to TechCrunch, Final said it already has 37,000 consumers signed up on the waitlist to try the new card when it becomes available.
Final Co-founders Aaron Frank, Matt Rothstein, and Andrew Dietrich told TechCrunch they first came up with the idea for a credit card that better protects against fraud after all becoming victims of the Target data breach in 2013.
“After we were all affected by the breach and all had our credit cards turned off suddenly, we thought there has to be a better system to improve this problem,” explains Frank. The goal with Final is to re-envision how consumers interact with their financial institutions, in a way that allows them to have more control over their payments and relationships with merchants and other service providers.
TechCrunch reported that Final’s business model will be standard, taking a share of transactions and, at scale, a portion of that debt. Final said its goal is not to be as “predatory” as others, thinking about ways to keep consumers informed about their financial health, and generally advocating for their customers, the news site stated.