Cardless

Inspiration

Just bought a new pair of shoes on Amazon? Yes you entered your card information. Subscribing to Netflix? Yes you entered your card information. But what if one of these companies' databases gets hacked? Do you want to have to worry about cancelling all your cards? Cardless makes sure you NEVER enter your card information on the internet. Not even with us! By giving you a unique virtual debit card for every online merchant you use, we make sure that your information is always protected. And the best part of this, you don't need to trust us, because you don't even give us your card information!

What it does

Cardless is a service which provides you a unique debit card issued against your linked bank account for every online merchant you use. We give you the debit card information you need to use for any online shopping portal or any subscriptions you have. It's really simple!

First time user - Comes into the service, makes an account with us but we don't ask for his bank details.
We give them an option to link to their banks and that's it! You're good to go!
Registering for a Spotify account? Sure. Just select the add a card option! And we'll issue you a debit card number with a CVV, expiration date and address information that you can use.
What this does? So in case, Spotify fails to protect your information, no worries! They can access your card details and all you have to do is log into our service and delete the virtual card issued for Spotify!
No need to delete your card and issue a new debit card and change it everywhere. No one will have access to your real debit card information except your bank! Not even us!

To improve security, you will only be able to use one virtual debit card for one particular website. So you will have one specific card for Amazon, one card for Macy's, and so on.

How we built it

Our initial plan was to do a web application MEAN Stack but using a MYSQL database instead of Mongo to make access easier, however we ran into a lot of technical issues making it work. Even after multiple mentor inputs, integrating all the features we wanted into a working prototype needed a little more time than we had in hand. Hence, we decided to move to Step 2. Creating a desktop application. The application mirrors the same features and usability of the web app. Our present prototype uses Java for it's back end infrastructure and Swing as it's GUI with a MySQL database working alongside.

Challenges we ran into

We faced some integration difficulties with Angular, Node.js and MySQL initially that for some reason refused to transfer and translate the data we were looking for. However, this was just a minor setback as we weren't dissuaded and quickly implemented all the functionalities into a desktop application. Although we were not absolutely confident about Swing as a GUI option, we worked hard on the final interface being as user friendly as possible.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are really proud of our idea and of the fact that it was really well-received with the mentors. We also feel happy that even though we had issues with the web app, we got the desktop app up and running. In addition, we're really proud that we were able to utilize all our resources properly and our skills to come up with a working interface.

What we learned

We learnt a lot about how MEAN Stack works and a lot more about Web Development languages like JSON, XML, Angular and Node.js for backend infrastructure. In addition, this project provided us with the opportunity to learn about really cool integration and web development platforms. We're literally getting out of this with so much more than we had imagined. Not just a cool project but also a new way of approaching web application development!

What's next for Cardless

Cardless has multiple possible uses. The prospects of this idea are massive. We are basically planning on taking card and payment privacy into a more secure and more user friendly arena. We plan on creating a really interactive web application that will be transferred into a mobile( Android and Apple) application that can be accessed from everywhere. Cardless has the prospects of being a world wide payment option that reduces the risk of losing your debit card information to potential hackers. The information is privy to just you and your bank but you can use it to pay wherever you want. If given more time, we can implement all other