Turtles all the way down

I got an envelope in the mail last week containing a letter. The letter described a set of new features that my credit card company was enabling for my account. Oh, and the envelope also contained a new credit card with a new number.

My reaction was along the lines of “Aw, crap, not again…”

This credit card company changes my number about once every two years. Given that I use this card for automated billing on at least 20 websites, each time the number changes I have to spend a good chunk of time updating each site. And I always end up forgetting one or two and suffer late fees as a result.

So why does my card number periodically change? Security reasons? An upgrade of services? Convenience? Maybe their convenience, not mine.