Wow! Great idea, great mission. Someone smart and well advised solving serious problems for real people who need help, that makes me happy.<p>My 2 cents: as you want to preserv their sense of autonomy, please use a card design that looks like an usual credit card. The "Visa" is already there, so just use some of these typical shiny, fancy, "3d" background designs of the credit cards we all get used to.
If your card is like the one at the picture on the landing page, it looks like a "toy card", something you give to children to pretend they have credit cards. Your customers will notice it and feel their son just substituted their real credit cards for make-believe ones.
Brilliant stuff.<p>THIS is something we need in my dear country Nigeria. Internet commerce has refused to take off because of the fear (sadly not misplaced). I am thinking if this service is not better positioned towards the Banks than the individuals themselves.<p>There would be default permitted websites and locations from where transactions are permitted. If a new website wants to be "registered" they apply to the bank to be put on a whitelist.<p>Presently, it is a blanket over securing that is taking place that makes it almost impossible to perform online transactions with Nigerian companies.<p>Great job.
<i>In Stinchcombe’s words, True Link’s mission is quite simple: "Fuck these scammers."</i><p>Amazing how fast you can neutralize all that noble work with just 3 words.<p>(FriendAndCoworkerLanguage != BusinessAttractionLanguage)
I think the hard part is identifying/normalizing the merchant based on the 20 character billing name + phone. Each McDonalds and Starbucks have wildly different text. Large purchases are immediately flagged for sure, purchases outside the local area. There is a lot of low hanging fruit. Crowd sourcing helps too. Interesting idea.
Really like this idea. My grandmother has had alzheimers for about a decade. There was a time at the beginning when this would have helped her spirits.
Bit confused with the difference between this versus something like an Amex pre-paid card. Why would someone use True Link over one of the existing pre-paid card options? A web interface?
This is awesome. I wonder if they will publish stats and ideally stories about "saves" they make. I guess they would need wide adoption to cause "herd immunity" for non user elderly though.
<i>...it’s hard to put an exact number on the scope of scams out there. But he estimates that there are 10 million people in the U.S. above a certain age who are living alone and susceptible to fraud.</i><p>I'm not sure what the point of the latter sentence is - I had to read it twice to make sure that I wasn't missing something...am I?