I have credit card nostalgia. WTF? 💳

Ruari wrote about payment card numbers

I'm aware that cards with no (visible) number exist, but mine still have embossed numbers. The embossing was actually useful to me twice in the last couple of years.

Once I went with someone to a pub in a small village for dinner. At first I thought it was closed because the lights were out. Then I saw the candles. There was a power cut, but the pub was still open. So we went inside and ordered some food and drink. The landlady was very cross with the power company, but also determined that she should stay open. And she had a plan. Instead of regular card payments, she had the mechanical card printing device that used to copy the embossed card details onto a paper payment slip. It worked, and I had to sign a credit card slip for the first time in many years.

If you've never seen one of these things, it's very weird. Your card clips in to a card-sized space, then a crinkly paper double-layered slip fits on top of the card. Once everything is secured in place, they run a big handle thing over the top, and the embossed card details are printed onto both layers of the slip. You get one layer and they send the other to the bank. The machine makes a very particular sound when it's used. And there's the nostalgia. I was surprised.

Another time I was in a lighting shop looking at lampshades. One of them looked ok, but there were notices up: "No refunds". What if I took it home and it looked awful? No problem, said the shopkeeper. We won't give you your money back if you've bought it, but we will let you take it home without paying so you can try it out. What?? It turned out that this involved us doing the crinkly paper thing. Notice that the payment doesn't actually happen when they print the card details onto the slip. It happens when they've send the slip to the bank. So I haven't paid, and if I take the lampshade back, I can watch them destroy the slip. But if I like it, I don't even have to go back. If they haven't heard from us in a week, they send off the slip.

We kept the lampshade.

Useless facts

The card number is called a PAN (Primary Account Number)

It starts with an id for the issuer

It ends with a check digit

PANs are unique and never re-used

Oops, they are re-used sometimes.