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Tell HN: Credit Card type is very easy to ascertain from the number

3 points by vaporstun ↗ HN
One thing I hate is when I'm checking out and a site asks me for my credit card number, then asks what type of credit card it is. Maybe it was my years in high school working for a pizza place, but credit cards are very easy. I thought it was basic info, but am surprised when I find out how many people have no clue. The first digit always determines what kind of card it is:

3 - American Express

4 - Visa

5 - Mastercard

6 - Discover

Go ahead, check your wallets, I guarantee that's right. Don't make your users give redundant information!

5 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 11.4 ms ] thread
dangrossman
Users expect it and are confused when an expected field is absent. You don't want to make a customer think twice about you when they have their wallet out and are about to make a purchase.
dminor
Of course, an A/B test would tell us definitively which is the better option, but I suspect you are correct.

We have the field, but set it based on the credit card number on the back-end.

vaporstun
I highly disagree with you. The less roadblocks you put in the way of a customer purchasing something, the more likely you are to get a conversion.

By this logic, Amazon's One-Click purchase would be a failure because people "expect" to have to enter their address and billing info every time. That's simply not the case.

Furthermore, some sites require this piece of data, some don't. I don't think this is like asking for the customer's email which they'd expect, selecting my card type is only present on ~50% of places I check out. (purely observational, no evidence to back that up) My point being that since entering your card type is not an expected piece of data every customer expects to put in for every transaction, they won't miss it to the point that they think your site is untrustworthy when it's not there. You have just made their life a little easier behind the scenes by not requiring them to supply it manually.

joezydeco
Some BBSes from 1984 are calling and want their G-Files back.
pedalpete
The 'what type of card' field should be before the number. I believe it should be a method of informing your users what cards you accept, rather than figuring out what card you are using. The same can be accomplished with an image of accepted cards, but I think the text version is more accessible.