Credit Card Expriration

Why only 4 years?

[percentages]

How many people here find it really annoying that every 4 years a bunch of suppliers start whining because your credit card is about to expire?

And what a bunch of hassle it is to fix! (you waste my golf and sailing hours :( )

It is that time for me.....my Amex card is about to expire, and now I have to spend countless hours going through countless pages of junk to update the expiration date on countless webpages!

Why not make credit cards good for life, we can always report fraud, the 4 year limit thing is just a pain!

Any credit card offering an unconditional experation date would have my business tomorrow morning. Quit spending millions on useless TV advertising and offer a service that appeals to the many!

/rantover

[Quadrille]

It varies from card to card, and within cards, from customer to customer.

Bill Gates probably has 25 years at least.

It's not to protect you from fraud - it's to protect the card company from you.

[lgn1]

We received some piece of email from Visa or Mastercard this summer, cant remember which.

They said that they have started a program than extended expiry dates to 20years or something, so websites that have pull down expiry years, should have pull down dates to at least 2026.

Now just because Visa allow the banks to issue a credit card with a 20 year expiry date, does not mean they are going to. I hate so see the look of that magnetic strip after 20 years :)

In 7 years of ecommerce, the longest one I saw was 5 years.

[Essex_boy]

20 years! I had a bank card once that made it to teh ripe old age of 15 it looked really dated and worn.

[Automan Empire]

My magnetic stripe is usually swiped out by year three. The bank always behaves as if they are accomodating an imposition when I request a replacement.
The recurring billing thing is a problem, though. If banks can make a single-use virtual credit card number for online safe use, why not a virtual permanent CC# "for life?"

[storstygg]

They do that partially to upsell you... and to make you agree to new terms of use, etc. when the new card comes.

Credit card companies are genius (and evil) marketers.