Credit Cards

Jan 20 2021

Since 2014 this site has sold ‘fresh stolen credit card data’ with ‘a promise of card validity’ and earned an estimated billion dollars. However the FBI and Interpol closed in this year, taking over blockchain domains they had been using as proxy servers for their Tor service. And they had seen a drop in activity when their administrator came down with Covid-19 and reported being hospitalized.

Moreover, the quality of the stolen cards they had been selling declined as well, because there have been fewer in-person card transactions during the pandemic and they’ve relied on hacked online card transactions.

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Jan 10 2021

In a glowing New York Times magazine profile of Brian Kelly, the founder of The Points Guy website, there are a number of unreasonable and poorly-argued claims. One in particular bothered me enough to address: that people earning credit card rewards do so at the expense of the poor.

Merchants pay fees to swipe credit cards, but the cost to accept credit cards is lower than other forms of payment. In the fight between businesses and credit card companies over fees, poor people are used as a fig leaf for corporate interests. Cutting interchange rates doesn’t lower prices, and doesn’t improve access to credit for the poor.

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Dec 05 2020

Last year Airline Information asked me to debate Stifel analyst Joe DeNardi on whether airlines should spin off their frequent flyer programs. I argued that they should not, that they were more valuable with incentives aligned through common ownership.

This year Airline Information again asked me to do a debate as part of their loyalty industry conference. This time I squared off against Charanpal Brar from Bond Brand Loyalty on the question of whether airline co-brand cards are as valuable as bank currencies.

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