Diners Club Club Rewards - Use DC Anywhere Online With "Laundering" Account

Check this out.

There is an online-wallet site at www.webcertificate.com (http://www.webcertificate.com) that is set up as a secure shopping tool and can be fueled up using Diners Club. When you establish an account, you get a 16-digit account number that works like a debit Mastercard. You make purchases against your account balance, and you can use it on any website that accepts Mastercard. But you can pump new funds into your balance in $50 increments using DC.

There's a $1 fee for every $50 you pump in, but the bottom line is, you can score Club Rewards points for making purchases using what the vendor websites "think" is a Mastercard account... by "laundering" the funds through the WebCertificate vehicle.

Works for me.

What if they go bankrupt in a few weeks, like many .com companies these days?

It's a very nice looking web site, which is what worries me. I would like to see statements from both MasterCard and Diners Club stating that this is OK with them. Reviews from an impartial third party would be nice too. Press coverage stating that this service exists doesn't impress me.

dotcom issues aside, at basically a 2% surcharge fee, that pretty much wipes out the value of an DC points you might earn. It is an interesting concept though.

Jeff

I have used that site several times last year to create a credit card account for my kids. For which they used for purchases on the web just like a credit card.
Used my Delta AMEX for charging up the Webcertificate and earned miles on Delta for using it.
Any small orphan dollars left in an account can be spent by having any local merchant enter the account number and expiration date manually. Using up only what is left to spend.
It helped me out because some sites do not take AMEX and they earned big bonuses for being first time buyers.
Over all I had no trouble at all with them or using the accounts.
BTW They take MC, VISA, AMEX, DISCOVER, and DINERS

RichG -

I would like to assure you that this operation is perfectly OK with both MasterCard and Diners Club.

To begin with, Diners is able to award you points since they charge C/Base and WebCertificate a commission fee (probably less than 2 percent). So, they can only encourage this. The only concern that they might have is credit risk (getting an equivalent of cash advance) - but since you use your WebCertificate for purchases only, you are fine.

MasterCard couldn't be happier either, since they, too get a cut of a discount that the MasterCard-accepting merchant pays to WebCertificate. Webcertificate also makes money on this commission (assuming that there is no big distortion between Diners' commission fee and what they earn). Obviously, they also make money on up to 20% referral fees that they get from websites if you originated shopping through WebCertificate's web site.

So, I would only about WebCertificate glitches that might delay or mess up funds transfers. Or their overall financial health -- but you should be able to get your money back from Diners if they go belly up while you keep a balance with them. Just don't keep too much money in a WebCertificate amount.
http://www.ExchangePath.com accepts person-to-person payments, charging your Diners Club for a purchase and transferring cash to recipient's checking account. They have horrible customer service though. But might be worth a try for you.


[This message has been edited by VladdieD (edited 01-03-2001).]

[This message has been edited by VladdieD (edited 01-03-2001).]

This is really too risky...
Everybody can accept fund transfer using credit card with PayPal these days. So this credit card conversion tool with Paypal together make the perfect non-traceable way to steal.

Imaging one day an unknown $500 charge shows up on your CC bill... you call the bank, then they told you Paypal has requested the authorization to charge. Then you contact Paypal, they said the fund was withdrawn to another credit card. After tracing this through MasterCard International, it then turns out this credit card is an debit/prepaid card with unknown owner.... and whoever has this card from webcertificate.com already spent the fund. The registered addresses (both physical and emails) are only forwarding services.

Well... this illustrated example is still not very complete. But with so many tools on taking credit card these days, it will be easy come up with some scheme even more complicated and harder to trace with those wicked minds.

The original idea is cool, it converts a Diners Club to a MasterCard so many more places would take it. But it has great potential for abuse.


[This message has been edited by FF*YXU (edited 01-03-2001).]

FF*YXU -

The point that you are missing is that your liability in the worst case is limited to $50. Provided that the unknown transaction is not initiated by you, you certainly do not have to call anyone other than (1)company who posted the charge, and (2) your bank, and ask nicely for a credit (and write up a letter to your credit card company).

Visa, MC, and Amex (and their member banks) have zero online liability rules, and will not hold you reponsible for a cent of bogus charges in 95% of cases. Just check your statement on time.