A Final Farewell

Cardholders, family, and friends:


06 December 2017 | By: Aaron Frank

A Final Farewell

Cardholders, family, and friends:


06 December 2017 | By: Aaron Frank

Pause on Applications

You may have noticed that we’ve switched our application process to be invite-only - while we know that may disappoint some of your friends who were thinking about applying, we promise it’s for a good reason. After being live for almost a year and a half (wow!), we felt like we’ve learned quite a bit about how we could improve our application processes, both externally and internally. To make as clean as possible of a transition between the old and the new, we’ve decided to temporarily pause applications. We can’t wait for you to see what we’re working on - stay tuned!


17 October 2017 | By: Aaron Frank

Equifax Breach Response

We know what you’re thinking: another day, another data breach…


19 September 2017 | By: Alex Cramer

Final Announces Apple Pay® and Advanced Card Controls to Enhance Payment Security

Final, the fintech company bringing transparency, control and security to credit cards, announces today Apple Pay availability for its cardholders. Through Apple Pay’s easy and secure payments on the web or in-person, Final is helping digital-age consumers take back control of their credit cards. In addition, Final is introducing advanced controls for its merchant-locked virtual cards, allowing cardholders to set custom monthly or lifetime spend limits for merchants like Netflix, Amazon and Lyft, furthering their level of control over card spend.

Fraudulent transactions made online or via phone increased 40 percent over the last year, making today’s consumer exceptionally more vulnerable to security breaches and hacks. Grey charges plague customers, when they forget about subscriptions or have services raise recurring prices without notice. Final’s proprietary technology reduces the hassles and headaches that come with a compromised account and grey charges. At its core, Final was created to make credit card users’ lives easier and provide a fundamentally better card experience than is offered today – shouldn’t your credit card company aim to do that?


06 September 2017 | By: Alex Cramer

Warning: You May Have an Error in Your Credit Report

I’m the kind of person who’s very hands on with personal finance: I budget and track spending carefully on Mint, review credit card statements every month to avoid grey charges, and periodically monitor my credit score on various free apps. Since I graduated college, I thought I had been doing my due diligence and taking all necessary precautions to both save money and spot fraudulent transactions. However, little did I know that I was missing one crucial component: reviewing my official credit reports.


31 August 2017 | By: Michelle Reade

Are you Financially Literate?

Sometimes, team bonding looks a little different at a FinTech company. Recently, we came across WalletHub’s great WalletLiteracy quiz and thought it might be fun to take it and compare our scores. Here’s what we found:


30 August 2017 | By: Victoria Krauchunas

Data Authority

Data security and privacy are becoming common discussion topics in our country. In the wake of hacking scandals related to the last election, Big Bank data leaks, and numerous other breach events, people are realizing that these concepts affect them every day in real ways. Given all of that, we thought it appropriate to share our stance.


28 August 2017

Top 7 Resources for Great Travel Experiences

We love to travel at Final - heck, it’s even a part of our origin story! However, we are still start-up employees on a budget, so we’ve found some great resources online to save money while seeing more of the world.


24 August 2017 | By: Victoria Krauchunas

Cut Back on Grey Charges to Save Money

If you’re looking to save some money quickly, checking your bank statements for grey charges is the way to go. Read on to learn more about how to stop and prevent grey charges!


22 August 2017 | By: Victoria Krauchunas & Ian Robertson

Request for Credit Cards

We at Final have decided to put out a Request for Credit Cards (RFCC), to help bring new ideas and products to market. One might think our Final branded credit card would be competitive, but besides building a product our customers love, what we’ve really built is modern credit card issuing platform that we’re looking to scale alongside partners. Think AWS for Credit Cards.


21 August 2017 | By: Aaron Frank

Fintech First Impressions

No one ever truly knows what to expect from their first job out of college. Going to school for Hospitality Management, all of my jobs up until now have been hospitality based. But as anyone in the Hospitality industry knows; plans change.


14 August 2017 | By: Kiley Pearl

Top 3 Resources for Picking a New Credit Card

The average American has 2-3 credit cards in their wallet (source). We know that soon, one is going to be a Final card - but how do you pick the others? We compiled some great resources on picking a new credit card that we wanted to share with you:


10 August 2017 | By: Alex Cramer

Breach Best Practices

Do you know what to do if a breach happens to you? If not, check out this infographic!


27 July 2017 | By: Victoria Krauchunas & Ian Robertson

Trust Wells Fargo with your Finances? No Thanks.

Here's 3 ways they have already proven they cannot be trusted.


25 July 2017 | By: Andrew Dietrich

Stop Unsolicited Mail

It should come as no surprise that here at Final, we prefer to get our communications via email - that includes any information from credit card or insurance companies. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we still often check our mailboxes to find them stuffed with junk.


24 July 2017 | By: Victoria Krauchunas

Transaction Processing

The time between handing your card over to a merchant and your transaction being completed is fairly minimal - but a lot goes on behind the scenes! Take a look at this infographic to learn about all of the steps (and institutions!) involved in making your transaction work.


20 July 2017 | By: Alex Cramer & Ian Robertson

Final on Product Hunt

Product Hunt

12 July 2017 | By: Team Final

Oakland Proud!

A few of us at Final had the privilege of meeting with Mayor Libby Schaaf earlier this week, and we couldn’t help but share our joy with you.


06 July 2017 | By: Alex Cramer

Rethinking what it is to be a credit card in 2017

At Final we spend a lot of time thinking about what it means to be a new credit card issuer in this day and age.


30 June 2017 | By: Aaron Frank

3 Things to Know Before Working at a FinTech Startup

Thinking about working for a FinTech startup, but not sure what to expect? Here are three things you might not know:


28 June 2017 | By: Victoria Krauchunas

Final launches credit card to compete with American Express, Chase!

OAKLAND, Calif. - June 20, 2017 - Final (https://getfinal.com), the Oakland-based credit card technology company has publicly launched its first product. Final aims to directly challenge the largest card issuers in the country - according to its CEO Aaron Frank, the company is building an “American Express for the digital era.”


20 June 2017 | By: Aaron Frank

Announcing our public launch!

About a year ago, Final announced that our “waitlist-only” beta was live.

This was a momentous occasion for us as a company, and for our earliest adopters. Since then, thousands have signed up, learned how incredible a credit card can be and helped us vastly improve our offering.

Today, we’re proud to announce that we are opening applications to the public and reducing the annual fee on our incredible product - based on cardholder feedback - from $49 to… $0!!!


06 June 2017 | By: Aaron Frank

Why Final is Transitioning to TOTP for 2FA

The security of our customers is a big focus here at Final and that focus drives everything from our password policy to how we manage customer data and how we harden our servers. In addition to picking a good password, one of the best things customers can do to protect accounts from unauthorized access is enable Two Factor Authentication (2FA). While we have always offered SMS-based 2FA as an option, we recently added Time-based One Time Pad (TOTP) 2FA and recommend our customers transition to it, if possible. In this article I will explain what 2FA is and why it’s important, how SMS-based and TOTP-based 2FA work, and why we are recommending everyone transition to TOTP.


31 May 2017 | By: Kyle Rankin

Launching a credit card program

A few months ago we wrote at a macro level about the number of decisions needed to launch a credit card program and the steps required to release a single feature.


18 May 2017 | By: Aaron Frank

Is Fintech the hardest _____-tech?

Starting a business is easier than ever. Template incorporation and investment docs, business planning advice, website builders, cloud storage, and other resources have become more widely available and cheaper in recent years (e.g.: Stripe Atlas).


03 May 2017 | By: Aaron Frank

Card Transaction Process

I sat down recently with a renowned journalist who wanted to learn more about credit card transaction processing. We discussed the steps involved in every card payment, the parties who facilitate transactions and a 30,000-foot view of the economics involved.


25 April 2017 | By: Alex Cramer

Delaware, South Dakota and Utah: home is where the card is?

Major Issuer States Map Infographic

18 April 2017 | By: Alex Cramer

What Is Your FICO® Score?

Every day, consumers are bombarded with ads touting the importance of knowing their FICO score. Many of these include links to websites where they can view their “official” FICO score.


11 April 2017 | By: Gene Shaffer-Strathman

2017 Payment Card Landscape

The card payments ecosystem is massive and shows no signs of slowing down as local and global markets become ever more connected.


30 March 2017 | By: Alex Cramer

So you want to start a credit card program...

Over 50 high-level decisions have to be made at the beginning of a program, from things as small as when to apply late fees to as large as the underwriting criteria for deciding who is eligible to become a cardholder.

20 March 2017 | By: Alex Cramer

Feature Development at Final

Every company, no matter the size, has a unique process for feature design and development - they could follow a traditional waterfall or scrum methodology, or they could create their own process to suit their needs. Social apps and other consumer startups are often able to push new code to production at the end of a 2-week sprint cycle or even daily, but as a company in a heavily-regulated financial space, we’ve had to add some steps to our process that make sure we’re compliant and scalable.


01 March 2017 | By: Victoria Krauchunas

Compliance in Credit Cards!

For more than 50 years, the credit card industry in the United States has consistently done what consumers expect it to - and in many cases, this has been disappointing. When we started Final, we realized we wanted to do things differently. Not everything, but lots of things - motivated by our desire to do better by consumers.


22 February 2017 | By: Gene Shaffer-Strathman

What's coming in 2017!

We’ve been hard at work laying out our 2017 roadmap here at Final, and I wanted to take some time to give all of you a sneak preview of some of the things we have planned!


25 January 2017 | By: Victoria Krauchunas

Reflecting on Our First Six Months of Being LIVE!

In case you were wondering, building a credit card company is a difficult endeavor - it’s probably the most complicated mass market product in one of the most heavily regulated industries - but it has been a rewarding journey. We wouldn’t have it any other way.


19 January 2017 | By: Aaron Frank

Reducing competition by building awesome stuff

What actually happens when someone shops for a new credit card these days?

04 August 2016 | By: Ben Apel

We’re live, thanks to you awesome people

It’s true – I struggle to imagine a way we would have convinced Visa, our processing partner and gateway partner (both very large publicly traded entities), the bank, and our investors that this should exist without your support.

29 June 2016 | By: Aaron Frank

Baking in Full-Stack Support to Build [Value] From Scratch

One of the best things about joining a startup is the ability to create things from nothing. In my case, it’s customer support.

10 May 2016 | By: Victoria Krauchunas

Dear Final, Inc.

Every day, we get emails from folks around the country (and many outside the U.S.) who are excited about the prospect of using Final, patiently waiting for launch. These letters are always different, and many do a great job of illustrating exactly why we’re excited about what we’ve built...

04 May 2016 | By: Ben Apel

Why Final Passwords Are At Least 12 Characters

Security is important at Final. Our company was founded in response to a security incident and one of the fundamental assumptions behind our product is that merchants sometimes get hacked. When that happens, we want to make it easy for you to limit that damage by disabling any affected numbers.

08 March 2016 | By: Kyle Rankin

Why Final is Needed: A Short Anecdote

I think it should made clear that I am a reasonably satisfied Wells customer for my checking and savings needs. This is not a gripe letter.

07 May 2015 | By: Ben Apel

I’m Helping Start a Credit Card Company, but I’ve Never Owned a Credit Card

It’s tough to think inside the box if you’ve never seen one.

10 February 2015 | By: Ben Apel

Final Secures One Million in Funding and Spot in Y-Combinator

Final, the only credit card that enables users to generate multiple card numbers, today announced it has raised $1 million in a recent seed round.

27 January 2015 | By: Ben Apel

The Genesis of a New Credit Card

Launching a credit card: our journey into one of the most viscous industries in the world.

10 December 2014 | By: Aaron Frank

Listen Money Matters Podcast Interview

Hosts Matt and Andrew of the Listen Money Matters podcast were kind enough to feature Final three weeks ago and discuss the future of credit and payments with CEO Matt Rothstein.

21 November 2014 | By: Matt Rothstein

Why Final Is a Design First Credit Card

The opportunity to rebuild the credit card starts with design.

14 November 2014 | By: Davis Godbout

Why We Launched Final on Product Hunt, Instead of a Traditional Press Blast

Tl;dr — because it’s a community of smart people you can genuinely engage with.


23 October 2014 | By: Ben Apel

The EMV Evolution: Chip-and-PIN vs. Chip-and-signature

You may have heard that EMV cards (better known as chip-and-PIN) will soon be the accepted norm at retailers across the United States. By October 2015, most payment terminals in the US will process charges using this new standard. Unfortunately, unless you travel to Europe on a regular basis, you might not be familiar. And thus far, banks haven’t done the best job of explaining what makes EMV cards better, and why they’re switching over.

22 October 2014

About Our Blog

This blog is written by the Final team to engage you, the community, about changes in payments and credit, and post news and updates about Final. We’re out to change the credit industry for the better. Help us by joining the conversation.

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