NEW! Wallet Plus Compartment 

Check out the new Lemon Wallet Plus card right in your card case, for easy access to efficiently monitor all your payment cards and bank accounts that you decide to connect.

Improved Account Balances - Stay on top of your spending activity. Connect your payment cards to monitor your accounts and check your credit limit right from Lemon Wallet, in the Plus Compartment, or in the individual card view.

Card Protection - Once you’ve connected your cards in the Card Protection section, powered by BillGuard, you’ll see a green check mark next to all the “clean” transactions. You’ll also get alerts for gray charges, billing errors and fraud.

Start your 15-day Free Trial of Lemon Wallet today and take advantage of these new features, catered to your digital wallet needs. 

Don’t have your Lemon Wallet yet? Download it now.

You may not think identity theft will happen to you, but more than 11 million Americans fell victim in 2011 alone – many of them just as cautious as you are. Implementing a variety of safeguards can definitely reduce your chance of becoming a victim, but it’s also important to know exactly what you should do should this unfortunate occurrence befall you. Lemon Plus can go a long way in helping to prevent identity theft with its lost wallet service, credit card monitoring, and enhanced security features. But if your identity is compromised, be sure to immediately follow these steps.

1. Identify the Accounts That Need To Be Closed
If you’ve confirmed that you’re a victim of identity theft, do not panic, and do not hastily close all your accounts. The only ones you should close are the ones that you’ve determined were tampered with. It’s essential that you leave all unaffected accounts open, because obtaining new credit for the time being will be challenging. Once you find the ones that were compromised, close them immediately. That said, you may find that all your accounts need to be closed.

2. Order Copies of all Credit Reports
Although you should monitor your credit on a regular basis, you won’t know how serious the results of the theft are until you take an in-depth look at your credit report. Order a copy of it from all three major credit reporting agencies (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion) at AnnualCreditReport.com, which is a centralized service created by these agencies for consumers to request free annual credit reports. Review each report carefully for anything that looks suspicious.

3. Notify Law Enforcement
Even if you feel it won’t do much good, be sure to file a police report. Most police agencies are now well-equipped to process identity theft reports, so the process should not be too difficult. Although the police may not be able to take action immediately, it is an important step in fighting erroneous charges.

4. Freeze Your Credit
Next, freeze your credit report by initiating an initial fraud alert – and be sure to do this with all three major credit reporting agencies. By taking this step, you’ll protect yourself against any further fraud. You usually don’t have to pay any fees for a credit freeze if you’re an identity theft victim.

5. Initiate an Identity Theft Report
Once your credit file has been frozen, create an official identity theft report, which can be done via the Federal Trade Commission website. This report can come in handy as you begin to dispute charges and deal with the reporting agencies. It can also help out if your case eventually goes to court.

6. Dispute All Errors
Finally, notify all creditors of the criminal charges. You may have to dispute each charge individually, or you may be able to work through the credit reporting agencies to get this information removed. Either way, the last thing you want is to find yourself on the hook for any fraudulent purchases, so contact the company first and work your way back to the credit reporting agencies.

Final Thoughts
If you should become a victim of identity theft, strenuously work with your credit providers and other businesses to ensure that these unpaid accounts never make it to your credit reports. It can be a lengthy process, but it’s worth your time and effort. Identity theft can affect your credit score for years to come – but only if you’re unwilling to fight back.

Have you been a victim of identity theft? What were the best steps you took?

Receipts

After a lot of research and user testing, we have decided to sunset some receipt-related features, including individual line items, the @lemon inbox, and automatic receipt processing. We realized that we could not continue to maintain and develop Lemon Wallet if we continued to absorb the costs of processing receipts.

In 7.1, we no longer automatically process receipts; for this reason, we have created the Receipt Wizard, which quickly guides you through adding receipt information manually. You can do this immediately after scanning the receipt, or at a later time when it’s convenient for you.

As a reminder, Lemon Dashboard will be discontinued on June 30th, 2013 and replaced entirely with the new Lemon Account page. If you need to download your receipt information before we remove the Lemon Dashboard completely, you can do so by visiting https://dashboard.lemon.com/reports.

If you are looking for more sophisticated receipt processing, you might want to try one of the following options:

• Shoeboxed – 5 free scans per month, or paid plans starting an $9.95/month for 50 scans 
• NeatReceipts scanner and digital filing system – one-time fee of $149.95, free 30-day trial of NeatCloud (plans starting from $5.99/month thereafter)
• Slice – free storage, for e-receipts only

As always, with Lemon Wallet you can store and protect your IDs, credit cards, debit cards, gift cards and much more.

Free Trial of Plus

We have also introduced the FREE 15-day trial of Lemon Wallet Plus. With the Plus plan, you can connect your credit cards to access your daily balance directly on your Lemon Wallet. What’s more, we’ll alert you if you have suspicious transactions on your account, or if your cards are about to expire (currently available for US-issued cards only).

Lemon Plus also gives you extra layers of security, like an optional alpha-numeric password (in addition to your PIN), and the ability to remotely unlink any devices that are signed in to Lemon Wallet in a single click.

New Features in Help

You may have also noticed some changes in our Lemon Wallet Support system. Now, you can find answers to all of your questions without ever having to leave the app. Need to ask something more specific? Submit your issue through the Help feature in-app to attach your device information in one click. That means faster, more accurate answers from our support team.

What is the Wallet Diet? The formula is simple: Lemon Wallet + Bellroy. With Lemon, you can digitize your cards so they are accessible right from your smartphone. Add in Lemon Wallet PLUS, and you get features like our Lost Wallet Service, Card Monitoring, and Enhanced Security to get even more out of your mobile wallet. What about the few cards you need every day? A new Bellroy slim leather wallet will take care of the rest with its sleek design, optimized for your lighter load.

Want to win a Bellroy wallet, and a year of Lemon Wallet PLUS? Enter our Wallet Diet Photo Contest!

How to Enter:
1. Snap a photo of your overstuffed wallet or purse
2. Upload it to our Facebook Tab (here)
3. Encourage friends to vote for your photo

The photo with the most votes at the end of each week will win one year of a Lemon PLUS account (worth $39.99) and a Bellroy slim leather wallet (worth $80.00). Enter today to get started!

Device verification for your security. Now, if you sign in to Lemon Wallet from a new device, or if you sign out and sign back in on the same device, you’ll have to go through a verification process as follows: (1) Enter the email address you used to sign up for Lemon, (2) We’ll send you an email with a 4 digit Verification Code, (3) Enter the Verification Code on your mobile,  (4) Create and verify a new PIN. This is another security measure that ensures that your Lemon Account is only accessed on the devices that are truly yours.

Forward receipts to receipts@lemon.com. Now that your email address is the same as your login, we’ll associate your receipt with your account automatically. If you forward a receipt from an email address that’s different from the email address you used to sign up for Lemon, we will walk you through a verification process to add that email to your account.

Lemon Account page to replace Dashboard. We’re now offering a cleaner, more mobile-friendly Lemon Account page. Here you can access all the information about your account and your subscription with a simple, fast new interface. We’ve also added the Lemon To-Do list to help you complete your profile, for a better and more interactive experience.

Lemon Wallet 7.0 is available for Android and iPhone - if you haven’t already, download it today!  

To give you a bit of a technical perspective on what keeps you safe within Lemon Wallet, we asked our CTO, Federico Murrone, to give us the inside scoop on how the various processes Lemon uses for security really work. He promised not to geek out on us – here’s what he had to say!

Your security is our top priority at Lemon Wallet HQ. We work hard to make sure that your data is protected on multiple levels, so that you can feel confident trusting Lemon Wallet as your personal digital wallet backup. We’ve had some great questions from our users, so I wanted to take a minute to give you a behind-the-scenes look into how our team has built a highly secure system to house your digital wallet – all conveniently located on your smartphone.

The first layer of protection is the four-digit PIN you use to access your Lemon Wallet. Those four digits are the key to unlock the 256-bit encryption within Lemon Wallet – that’s the highest level of encryption available online today. Each and every card in your Lemon Wallet has its own unique encryption series that is saved in the RAM of your device. Each encryption series is periodically refreshed against our server using the Lemon Wallet app credentials. The app has a handshaking process that de-validates any previously stored information each time the encryption series are changed, creating a consistently secure environment for your sensitive information.

Just as you need a debit card and four-digit PIN to get cash from an ATM, Lemon Wallet requires a user’s unlocked smartphone and four-digit PIN to be able to access the app. So what happens if you lose your smartphone, or if it gets stolen? If someone tries to access your Lemon account by guessing your four-digit PIN, they will automatically be logged out after several incorrect entries – triggering an immediate encryption series refresh. Lemon also has mechanisms in place that ban IPs after excessive attempts to enter PINs. These additional layers of protection add a comprehensive wall of defense to your Lemon Wallet, keeping your data secure in the cloud.

In terms of processing payments with your Lemon Wallet (for a Lemon Wallet PLUS subscription, for example), we are PCI-compliant and TRUSTe certified.

Have questions about Lemon Wallet or security? Send us a message on Facebook or Twitter – we love hearing your feedback!

So why upgrade to Lemon PLUS? Additional security layers and enhanced card and data management tools are just the start. Lemon PLUS makes your wallet even safer, smarter, and more interactive. Our favorite PLUS features include:

Lost Wallet Service: We know that dealing with the canceling and re-ordering of credit cards after they’re lost or stolen is a huge hassle. With our Lost Wallet Service, simply press the Lost Wallet button in the app and our agents will help you cancel and replace all your credit cards.

Card Monitoring: Wouldn’t it be great to have all your credit card balances in one place? With Lemon Wallet PLUS, you can monitor up to 10 credit cards, and also keeping track of transactions; we’ll send you notifications of suspicious activities and alerts when your cards are close to expiring.

Enhanced Security: At Lemon we are working constantly to ensure your sensitive information stays safe and secure. But to further ease your peace of mind, Lemon Wallet PLUS lets you use App Lock to add an additional layer of 8-digit password protection to your account. Still concerned what will happen to your information if your mobile device goes missing? The Unlink Devices feature lets you remotely log out of your Lemon Wallet account to ensure no one can access your information – without deleting the content of your entire Lemon account.

Data Export: Do you travel frequently or try to keep track of piles of receipts for expense purposes? Lemon Wallet PLUS lets you export all your receipt data quickly and simply to CSV (Excel), Evernote, Box and Expensify to make tracking of expenses that much simpler – saving you time and that extra wallet bulge from carrying too many receipts.

We’re excited about all of these fantastic features and hope you join the Lemon PLUS community soon! Let us know what you think over on Facebook or Twitter – we’d love to hear your feedback as we work to make your wallet even more convenient, connected, and secure.

To upgrade to Lemon Wallet PLUS, log into your Lemon Dashboard, select “Account Settings” and Go Plus!

To me, having your transactional identity in the cloud means, first of all, having ready access to important information about your financial life. If Facebook stores your social identity, and LinkedIn your professional identity, where do you keep your transactional identity?

Lemon Wallet will be striding ahead with this as our guiding principle, incorporating the incredible user feedback we’ve been receiving (thank you!) and the research we’ve been doing at Lemon HQ.

Although we started by offering a way to organize your receipts and get more out of them, we quickly realized that this was limiting our users to a very small slice of the true power of a digital wallet. There are already a lot of great tools out there to help you track your spending for budgeting and tax purposes, and we want to offer our users more than just a straightforward personal finance management tool.

We want to offer a true digital wallet — always connected, never forgotten, and secure in the cloud.  We want to provide you a way to organize your entire transactional experience, not just track receipts.  Because of this commitment, our development efforts are focused on building an ever-smarter digital wallet. Our integration with Apple’s Passbook is a great example of working in tandem with existing technology.

Moving forward, we will continue to integrate Lemon Wallet both with developing technologies and with your real-life transactions. This includes plans to be able to pay with cards stored in your Lemon Wallet, and beefing up our wallet insurance offerings.

We can’t say too much – you’ll have to stay tuned for more great Lemon news and updates to come. Connect with us via Twitter (@LemonWallet) and Facebook, or email questions to support@lemonhq.com.

]]> http://lemon.com/blog/company-info/whats-next-for-lemon-wallet/feed/ 0 http://lemon.com/blog/mobile-2/why-cloud-storage-is-the-safest-way-to-defend-your-digital-wallet/ http://lemon.com/blog/mobile-2/why-cloud-storage-is-the-safest-way-to-defend-your-digital-wallet/#comments Thu, 20 Dec 2012 15:06:38 +0000 Julia Bloch http://lemon.com/?p=2565 You can lose your phone, but you can’t lose your cloud

In a recent study, 51 percent of American adults surveyed believe that bad weather directly affects cloud computing, while 95 percent claim they don’t use cloud computing at all (see full article here). These statistics show the (somewhat scary) reality that many of us may not realize how often we are already using cloud storage. Online banking, online shopping, social networking, playing online games and storing photos, videos or music are all examples of cloud based services – and ones that we use quite frequently.

So why do some people get skittish when terms such as “mobile wallet” or “digital wallet” and “in the cloud” are used in the same sentence? We think there is a common misconception with regards to digital wallets and the safety of cloud storage. Consumers that go online to check bank statements, pay a bill, or order an item online are inherently trusting the security of operating “in the cloud” – as they should!

Cloud Storage = Security (Source: Unitiv)

With Lemon Wallet, all the contents of your wallet including IDs, loyalty cards, credit and debit cards, and even receipts are securely backed up in the cloud with AES 256-bit security (the strongest level available online) and not just on your mobile device itself. Think of it this way: Simply saving all of your credit and debit card data directly to your phone may sound convenient, but how is it any different than carrying around your standard leather wallet? This is where Lemon Wallet with cloud storage takes security to the next level.

Not only can you lock your smartphone and implement PIN protection in order to access Lemon Wallet and its features – demonstrated here – but because all of your information is backed up to the cloud, it will always stay safe and secure on our servers even if your phone is lost or stolen. This makes your Lemon Wallet with cloud storage even safer and more accessible than the leather one in your back pocket.

For added security, like the ability to remotely unlink your Lemon Wallet account from your mobile device and take advantage of additional password protection, check out our premium plans. And to learn more about why cloud storage is key for mobile security (as accomplished by Lemon’s partnership with the award-winning service Bill Guard), check out this recent Forbes piece and stay tuned for a future blog post with even more information about Lemon’s advanced security!

So what does this update mean for you?

Lemon Wallet v5.1 easily supports the 4 inch Retina display on both the iPhone 5 and the new iPod Touch. In addition, the update easily allows you to add any Lemon card to Passbook to help you further organize your transactions and stay on top of spending, expenses, memberships, loyalty programs and more. With our new Wizard tool, edit all different types of cards in just a few taps to fully digitize them, ensuring that each card in your Lemon Wallet is even easier to read and access than the real thing.

Our team is working hard to constantly improve your Lemon Wallet experience. By taking your valuable feedback straight to engineering, we are working to prevent future glitches and continue to enhance your transactional experiences using Lemon. Stay tuned to hear more of what you can expect next with Lemon Wallet – we’re excited about what’s to come and hope you are too.

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Email us at support@lemonhq.com or easily reach us on Twitter or Facebook.

Your security is our top priority. Read more about how Lemon Wallet makes your wallet theft-proof here.