This is a very cynical take. Not all of these things are designed to trick you.
For example, requiring a credit card for a free trial is to prevent free trial abuse. A normal person can only get so many valid credit card numbers, assuming you can detect burner cards (which for the most part the CC companies will happily help you do).
Yes, a good company will notify you that a trial is going paid, and a great company will require an affirmative action on your part, but the main goal isn't to trick you and hope you forget.
Also, the part about not prorating costs if you use less resources. Usually you get a discount for paying up front. The reason you get a discount is because it allows the company to do more efficient resource planning, a savings they pass on to you. If they allowed you to cut back, you haven't upheld your part of the deal. A big company can absorb the loss, but a small one can't.
Yes, some companies do these are dark patterns to increase their profits. But most have some pretty good non-nefarious reasons to act like they do.
Agree with you, most companies have no malice. Especially, the ones that are early-stage, proving their PMF, and ready to scale are a pot of lovely gold. These companies are doing what it takes to make the customers happy.
They might, but also privacy.com will not let you get more than two cards per site without a special exemption. I learned this when I tried using multiple cards for AWS, one for each app. They wouldn't let me do it.
So maybe Stripe knows which burner providers have their own restrictions and treat them differently?
Not trivial to detect something like privacy.com or for that matter any virtual card product.
Blacklisting such cards is a Hobson's choice [1] for the SaaS merchant. A lot of legit users with legit reasons use virtual cards and flagging them could be loss of revenue.
Stripe Radar can be configured to provide signals that would reflect a virtual card, but not explicitly. Further trying to solve preventing virtual cards use potentially introduces false flags.
Requiring 3D secure may.
Depending on the product and audience, the prevalence of virtual cards may be extremely low. Outside of hackernews, the payments industry, and business cards nobody uses virtual cards like privacy.com
They probably have their own BIN/IIN. So it may be trivial. Still privacy.com per merchant cards are more likely to be actionable than stolen or prepaid cards.
For example, requiring a credit card for a free trial is to prevent free trial abuse. A normal person can only get so many valid credit card numbers, assuming you can detect burner cards (which for the most part the CC companies will happily help you do).
Yes, a good company will notify you that a trial is going paid, and a great company will require an affirmative action on your part, but the main goal isn't to trick you and hope you forget.
Also, the part about not prorating costs if you use less resources. Usually you get a discount for paying up front. The reason you get a discount is because it allows the company to do more efficient resource planning, a savings they pass on to you. If they allowed you to cut back, you haven't upheld your part of the deal. A big company can absorb the loss, but a small one can't.
Yes, some companies do these are dark patterns to increase their profits. But most have some pretty good non-nefarious reasons to act like they do.