[AMA] I am the CEO of DiviPay. Ask me anything!

Hi there,

My name is Daniel and I'm the CEO of DiviPay.

DiviPay lets you instantly create virtual cards that keep you in control of your money. DiviPay virtual cards are powered by Mastercard and can be used to protect yourself from online fraud, stop unwanted subscription fees and spend abroad without paying any transaction fees.

A lot of our users have originated from Illumination's post: https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/329572 so we thought it would be helpful to open up a direct line of communication with you all.

Also, if you're interested, Illumination interviewed us about some of the technical aspects of the business on his blog:

https://www.thebulgingwallet.com/home/2018/3/28/interview-wi…

AMA

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      • +2

        I'd like to say you're right, but.. I'll need to check with OP if you're right.

        Just trying to say you're right to some degree. ;)

  • +4

    It all sounds great to me, except for one thing.
    If we had a problem with a retailer, had solid grounds for a charge back and the retailer refused to cooperate then are we solely reliant on you to resolve it?
    A lot of us already have credit and debit cards with no foreign currency fees issued by major banks who are members of FOS. When something goes wrong we have an extra layer of protection because of that.
    Divipay is not listed as a member of the Financial Ombudsman Service. Does that mean if you tell us you can't get the retailer to budge in a transaction we dispute, we do not have any recourse at all?
    What legal power and resources do you have to instigate charge back processes that force merchants to comply?
    Is your own complaints resolution process available to us?

    • -2

      I have used FOS on 3 cases and found them uniformly mediocre and biased towards the bank.

    • FOS is for consumer <-> issuer disputes, while chargebacks are an issuer <-> acquirer matter. There are strict rules around chargebacks and compliance is not really an issue, given neither the issuer nor acquirer bears cost regardless of outcome (it's all passed onto the merchant if successful).

      • FOS is for consumer yet a consumer of Divipay can not access FOS.
        Are you saying the issuer is Mastercard so Divipay is irrelevant to any transaction dispute and has no role to play? (genuine question)

    • Hi, DiviPay will issue all chargebacks on your behalf. We work with our card issuing partner to handle the chargeback process and ensure the customer rightfully recieves their refund.

      • +1

        I had the same question.
        What does your response mean in reality?
        Are you confirming that we would be 100% as likely to receive a successful charge back in comparison to purchasing via standard mastercard?

        • Yes!

  • +2

    Sometimes when I purchase an airline ticket the airline tells me that I will need to present the purchasing credit card at check in. How would I deal with this when there's no physical Divipay card?

    • This is an interesting area that honestly we have not thoroughly tested. You are able to show your virtual card online from the DiviPay platform however whether or not this is accepted comes down to the airline staff that is checking you in. Airlines are becoming more aware of the use of virtual cards in the industry but it really comes down to whether or not the individual is familiar with them.

    • +1

      I’ve bought many airline tickets from airlines that request this, not once have I needed to show the card at checkin. Interested to hear if anyone actually has needed to produce the physical card.

      • +2

        Ditto; many flights, never been asked.

      • thai air aways ask me

  • the other post says you accept visa but your site is silent on this. tried to signup with firefox but the buttons did not work. had to click login and then revert to signup. visa does not seem to work for topup?

    • Hi, sorry for the inconvenience. Are you using an ad blocker? this may cause the signup button to fail. The Mastercard references on our website are solely around the fact that the card we issue is a Mastercard. To load funds either a Mastercard or VISA can be used. If you send me an email at [email protected] with the error you are recieving when trying to top up I will fix the issue for you.

  • +2

    Hi Daniel, any news on Apple Pay? Cheers

    P.S. Keep up the great work!

    • +2

      Hi, we are working hard on delivering this feature. We anticipate delivering on this promise in the next 6 months. We will be upgrading our overall card issuing platform that will not only allow the cards to be provisioned into Apple Pay but also provide additional security functionality.

      • Thank you for the update Daniel. If you need a hand with validating Apple Pay integration let me know (we have exchanged emails on the topic previously). Thanks again!

  • Can you get your funds back after they are loaded onto a card?

    • +2

      When you close the card, it goes back to your funding card as a refund.

      Source: Personal experience.

    • +1

      Yes, to refund your balance you simply close your card. The refund will be triggered automatically and returned to your funding card.

      • Can I return funds to a bank account if the funding card is no longer active?

  • +1

    Do you suppirt apple, samsung and android pay

    • To my knowledge, they don't but I really hope they do in the near future.

    • +2

      Hi, Currently we do not support the Pays, however this is our number one requested feature. We are currently doing a large piece of work to upgrade our card issuing platform which will ultimately support provisioning into Android/Apple Pay.

      • Would be awesome it this can be implemented because then I can earn points while overseas and have my 28 degrees as a backup.

  • If you load funds onto DiviPay is it permanent, even if the original card is canceled?

    • No, you will always have the ability to remove your funds from the DiviPay platform back to your funding source.

      • Can you refund to another account or do you have to go back to your original funding source? What if the original funding source was a credit card which is now closed? I assume that there are money laundering and possibly fraud concerns, but if you provide proof of ownership of both the source and destination accounts then it seems like these would be mitigated.

        • Hi, generally all money must go back to the same funding source that was used to fund the card. You are right in suggesting this is a compliance issue. If the original funding source has been closed or the card expires we will work with your card issuer to return the funds to your new card.

        • @divipay: OK, sounds like it would work.

          I've signed up and am having trouble making my first payment. Managed to get PayPal to link the card, but then get "Your card has been declined by your card provider. Please try a different card or contact your card provider." when trying to use it (and was unable to get it work directly on the site I was on, but they offered PayPal, so I tried them instead). No more details shown there, nothing shown anywhere in Divipay site either.

          Edit: OK, I should read the notifications at the top of the site - "Maintenance 17/04/18: We are currently performing maintenance on our systems and payments will be declined during this time. We appreciate your patience and will be back soon" - it's the 18th now, hope it's all going OK!

        • +1

          @ely: Hi, sorry for the inconvenience here. This is an issue on our end. Our card issuing partner provides us with a daily payment limit. Once that daily limit has been reached some transactions will start to decline. This limit generally resets around midday so if you could please be patient until then your transaction will work. We are working with our partner to permanently solve this issue, due to rapid growth on our platform we begun hitting our upper limit quicker than anticipated.

        • @divipay: Quicker than expected growth is a good problem to have I guess :)

        • @divipay: Was able to succeed later on, thanks.

  • I tried to sign up for a new account and then went to change the email i signed up with.
    Now when i try to use another email it says my number is already in use, so i went back to sign in with the first email it doesnt let me log in it says my email is already taken! So unable to use your product because i cant get back to the validate phone screen

    • +1

      Hi, could you please email me [email protected] with both the old email and new email you would like to use. Thanks, i will get this sorted for you.

  • Hi Daniel,

    Since Divipay is a virtual cc, any chance Divipay would open up their API services for account creation/deletion?

    • Hi, this is something we are thinking about expirmenting with. Would be great if you could provide some insight on how you would like to use this and in what scenario. We would be looking to really understand the customer problem and how an API could best solve for it.

      • Hi Daniel,

        You probably would never guess the endless possibility people can do with your API haha
        For example, divipay is linking Real CC to Virtual CC. What if there's an API that allows us to have a blank Virtual CC number and attach whatever real CC to that Virtual CC using the API? For example, my Real CC_1 gets 3points at Woolies and 1 points at Coles, but my Real CC_2 gets 1 points at Woolies and 3 points at coles. I could just use one virtual CC to use at both places and it will automically switch to whichever it has a higher reward ratio.

        Also, I think it would be VERY interesting if you allow Alipay and Wechat pay to load your virtual CC. You will definitely crack the "Chinese Tourist in Australia" market which is a big spender.

        Oh and by the way, if I have my ad blocker on, the SIGN UP button doesn't work (another Jira task for your front end dev lol)

        • I don't think this will work as all your CC_1 and CC_2 see would be transactions with DIVIPAY not with Coles or Woolworths

  • -2

    Hi wat is divplay? Is it a new app. Thx

  • Do you currently have a digital marketing strategy to promote brand awareness or are you still relying on word of month advertising?

    • Currently we are focused on building and improving our product. We are lucky that this is driving word of mouth and we have not had to invest at great lengths into digital strategies.

      • Word of mouth is a very strong marketing tool, good idea to stay focused on the product.

  • +1

    Some questions:

    1. Do you believe your business model is sustainable? Given people generally don't pay for banking services in Australia, why do you think your customers will be willing to?

    2. How do you plan to react to card on file tokenisation when it arrives in Australia, given it could eliminate the use of CC numbers?

    • +1

      Hi great questions,
      1. I think there are lots of improvements that can be made in financial services where real value is added to the customer, in which instance customers are happy to pay a small fee. However is this sustainable..probably not. Ultimately as the landscape becomes more competitve consumers will bare less of the charges and we will see a model where fees are redistributed to merchants and other third parties that derive some value from the consumer using the product.
      2. Tokenisation of Card on file is a great initiative by the schemes, however it does rely on the merchant signing up to the service. The DiviPay product gives that control and extra layer of security back to the customer. Additionally we are building a number of transactional controls that give the user more control in the merchant/customer relationship. Closing cards or setting strict spending limits mean they are protected if a merchant tries to overcharge or continue charging even after a service is cancelled.

  • +2

    Can I keep $0 on my DiviPay card and allow it to automatically take money from my credit card when I actually make a purchase?

    • +2

      Hi, currently cards must be loaded in advance. However we are upgrading our core card issuing platform which will allow us to offer 'Just in Time Funding' whereby cards can hold a $0 balance right up until a transaction is authorised. I am keen to hear more about this request though and why you would like this functionality?

      • There are a few reasons, but none specifically because of your product because I think it looks great thus far:

        1. Loading the exact amount based on the indicative currency conversion might cause the card to be declined because you can be off by 1-5c possibly.
        2. If you do belly up, my money is gone, no Government Guarantee like a bank. Same reason my PayPal is always at $0.
        3. Money outside my savings/investments is money not doing it's job.
        • +1

          You can always do a chargeback on your credit card since you top up with your cc.

        • I usually don't load the exact amount when it's going to involve foreign currency. Just load it extra a bit, make the purchase and close the virtual card to get the balance back.

  • +2

    Are we able to set the address of the virtual card to be located in a different country so that it might work with services which might happen to rhyme with 'amon time' and 'stitch' ?

    • +2

      Hi, at the moment no, but custom billing addresses on a card level are something we are currently working on. We hope to launch this functionality over the comming months.

  • +1

    Hi Daniel,

    I want a way to spend my crypto and buy stuff. Can you please allow a way to fund your cards thru crypto?

    • +1

      Hi, something we have been looking into. It is on the roadmap but still a while away at the moment.

  • Hi Daniel,

    Can you please provide some advice/approach on networking for young people, I am sort of struggling with that aspect at the moment.

    Thank you

    • +2

      Hi, Interesting question. If you want to network and learn more about a particular industry find people who you think can be helpful and dont be afraid to ask them to meet with you. Be prepared and ask meaningful questions where the other person can share their knoweldge. Even better is if you can add value to the relationship. Understand what they may be looking for/ need help with and be the expert that can solve their problems. As a young person people will be willing to help you out, mentor and provide advice, you just need to be confident and ask for it.

      • Thank you!

  • Can this be used to pay for games on a foreign eShop for the Nintendo Switch or will I have the same problems as trying to use a local card? For example my card wouldn't work on the Russian eShop.

    • Hi, we do have a number of customers using the card to pay for games on foreign websites. In some instances the merchant will block international cards or cards where the billing address is not local. Feel free to give it a try though and let me know if it works.

  • Hi Daniel

    1-Banks also provide virtual cards that can be closed upon request, what makes your product stand out?

    2- Has your service been used for fraud, I am guessing that there are bad customers? How do you deal with it if you don't trace them?

    3- Anyway to use a fast load method to add credit? Like PayPal or from a nominated account or method?

    4- If I am issued a refund from a service provider for any reason after the virtual card is closed. Where the money goes?

    5- Does the virtual card numbers get recycled over time? What happens to the money if refunded?

    • +1

      Hi, thanks for your questions.
      1. We offer a consumer friendly product that is focused on providing increased security for the end user. We are constantly adding additional card controls and transactional logic that allows the user more control over how their cards can be transacted. Banks typically provide virtual card capabilities within a commercial setting only.

      1. Unfortunately offering a financial service will make you a target for fraud. In order to counter misuse of our platform all users must verify their mobile, email and funding card. This gives us confidence that the user is the true owner of the funding card. We also use a number of fraud detection tools that analyse user behaviour.

      2. We are working on building a central balance that can be funded by a nominated account.

      3. We will be notified of all refunds from merchants even if the card has been closed. In this instance we will create a new card for you and return the balance to the new card.

      4. Theoritically yes, however as there are such a wide combination of card numbers + expiries + cvc we can create almost an infinite amount of virtual cards.

  • +3

    My experience with Divipay has been pretty good.

    What I've been using it for so far:

    1) instead of booking overseas flights/hotels with my 28 degrees, I've been using divipay. Since 28 deg doesn't give you any points, but the card I use to load up divipay does

    2) loading up a divipay card when I needed to make minimum spend on a credit card

    Issues so far:

    1) Hotel overseas wanted to see the card I booked with, so they can charge that (booking.com only does a pre authorisation). And they didn't quite understand the concept of a virtual card. This was a whole lot of drama as I thought I had been charged fully on my divipay card. Which leads me to number 2

    2) Divipay doesn't show if something is a pending transaction or not, and doesn't always distinguish between an actual transaction and pre authorisation. This is what caused the confusion at the hotel as I thought they were trying to double charge me. Now I know booking.com doesn't actually deduct any money from your card, you have to pay at the hotel. (This drama can be avoided with cheaptickets.com, where you pay directly to them and you dont have to pay at the hotel)

    3) $1000 total card limit is annoying. When booking hotels I had to split up the bookings into 2 as they were over $1000. Then get the hotel to join the two bookings together so that I wouldn't have to change rooms…

    If they can distinguish between pending transactions immediately, increase the $1000 limit, and add Amex support it would be a truly fantastic service

    • +2

      Hi, thanks for this feedback. Im interested to hear the hotels response to the virtual card and if they followed through and charged it for the remeaining balance? To answer your other questions we are working on both >$1,000 loads and distinguishing in our transaction list the difference between pending, auths and settled tractions. We hope to launch the updated transaction list soon with the increased load values to follow over the next few months. Please let me know if you have any other feedback.

      • +2

        Yep they ended up taking a photo of the virtual card after I pulled it up on my phone. Took a bit of explaining and getting the manager involved.

        They ended up charging the card. On Divipay this of course showed up as two transactions, so it looked like I had been double charged… Which added a bit of stress that isn't ideal on holidays

    • Does the amount transferred not count as a cash advance? That's really good then, because I too didn't like how my 28 degrees didn't get points for overseas transactions! Now I can use my points card instead?

  • Hey Divipay,
    Are you looking for DevOps guys at the moment? :)

    I'm here: https://github.com/DragonStuff

    • +1

      Hi, we actually just filled a position but many more roles will open up throughout the year. Keep an eye on our website for the next opportunitiy. Feel free to email through your resume aswell to [email protected]

  • Beyond DiviPay, what are your goals in life?

    • +6

      be a good person, enjoy life, give back and help others reach their goals.

  • Do you know de wae?

  • Where can we find the roadmap?

    How far away can Divipay virtual credit cards be funded by cryptos such as Bitcoin or Ethereum?

    • +1

      Hi, we don't currently have a public roadmap but are working on our own type of community/ forum pages where users will have access to the roadmap and can leave feedback on what kind of things they want to see next. Funding via crypto is definitely a future goal for us but is currenlty longer term (6 months or so).

  • +2

    Do you plan to integrate with paid with new NPP?

    • +1

      We would love to get access to the NPP so users can load funds in real-time via their bank accounts. Unfortunately integration into the NPP rails is a long and costly process. We would look to use a third party and leverage their integration in the future.

  • your phone verification isnt working properly, Ive just sent you a message about this. Can you help?

    • Hi, do you mind confirming that we responded to your request? Alternatively let me know what email you used. If we havent fixed your error please email me [email protected]. thanks

  • You guys hiring? Recent graduate here.

    • Hi, we will be hiring a number of roles over the coming months. Feel free to send your resume through to me at [email protected] and i will let you know if a role becomes available that suits your skill set.

  • [AMA] I am the CEO of DiviPay. Ask me anything!

    Did a meteor really kill off all the dinosaurs?

  • What are your foreign exchange rates like? I used Citibank debit card and their exchange rates were very good.

    • +2

      We have one of the best exchange rates on the market, using the Mastercard interbank rate. You can see indicative pricing using our exchange calculator on our homepage.

  • Hi, I just made an account with your service. Under the funding cards section, I can see the last 4 digits for my bank card but when I click change card, it says 'We never store your card details'.

    Can you please elaborate more on what exactly isn't stored and what is? Thanks

    • +1

      I think that's a false flag. Card details should be stored to stop fraud but not exposed to the merchant.
      Op just replied to my comment that they do verify funding sources. It should be changed to "we never expose your card details"

    • +2

      Hi, Thanks for your question. I agree that maybe our terminology here is a little misleading. We 100% do not store your card details. When you add your funding source that information is stored securely with our third party banking provider who are PCI-DSS Level 1 certified. We store a token that represents your card details and the last 4 digits. In the instance that we need to charge your card we provide the token to our provider to make the transaction against your card.

  • What do you think of OzBargain community and why did you choose OzBargain for your AMA?

    • +3

      We love the OzBargain community. A lot of our earliest customers came from @illumination posts https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/329572 Since then they have provided vital feedback and suggestions to help us create a great platform. They have also been patient with us when things on our platform don't quite go to plan. We choose OzBargain to do an AMA to hopefully add some value to the community and provide a deeper insight on our business to a lot of our customers.

  • Will this only work with personal credit cards, rather than say prepaid credit cards?

    • +1

      Hi, you can use a prepaid card to load funds into your DiviPay wallet.

  • -1

    Why are you CEO not director

    • The Corporations Act only talks about Managing Directors, which is our equivalent to the American CEO.
      As you can see they are a Director.

  • How big is the company and how many employees so you have?

    • +1

      We run relatively lean and like to think of ourselves as a technology business that does payments. We are currently a team of 7 but are hiring for new roles every other month.

  • -2

    How many people did you have to stab in the back, sabotage their careers, and push to the brink of suicide to get to your CEO position.
    How does being a CEO impact your family life?

    • +2

      ahah only 1 person…myself. No, I love my job and absolutely love coming into work every day.

      • -5

        Is not responding to questions a required skill to become a CEO? Because you have not responded my question.

  • What should be our next April fool trick?

  • +1

    Hey Daniel.

    Is there another plan to increase overall capacity to allow people to use divipay? at 1015am Monday time, My payment has been rejected as insufficient funds is available again.

    • +1

      Yes definitely! We have had some issues with card declines due to our growth. We have a daily spend limit imposed on us by our card issuer, once that daily limit is reached cards will begin to recieve an insufficient funds error. We are working hard to permanently solve this problem and do a better job at forecasting future growth. Thanks for your patience!

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