I've often wondered why the credit card companies haven't gotten into this business already. My bank (Bank of America) offers a program called ShopSafe, where you can generate temporary credit card numbers to use online. You can set the limit and expiration date, even for recurring transactions. The numbers are only valid for the first merchant that authorizes a charge.
I wonder why there hasn't been a credit card company that offered a version of this with the option to prepay or link to a bank account or existing credit card. That way people could shop online and merchants who are already set up to accept credit cards wouldn't have to modify their code to interface with yet another payment API. The credit card companies would still get money from the fees charged to merchants, and they could also earn interest on the balances users keep.
The iDEAL system is very good also. It works like this:
1. You click checkout
2. You are sent to your bank's website
3. You login
4. You get a screen that shows the amount you have to pay, you verify this
5. You get an SMS with a code that you have to enter
6. Purchase completed
The nice thing about this is that it's very quick and the seller doesn't get your credit card number; steps 2-6 happen on your bank's website. And there is no intermediary: it's just the seller's bank and your bank. There is nothing to set up, you just have to have a bank that supports it (almost all banks in the netherlands do) The nice thing for sellers is that chargebacks are not possible. This is a much saner way to do online payments.
They either buy a $10 phone, or they use another payment method. Or perhaps there are banks that don't require SMS authentication, but I don't want to be a customer.
We have the same thing in Sri Lanka called a "Web Card". You don't even need to have a bank account to get a Web Card - just pay some amount, and get a card for that value. Then you get a temporary VISA number which can be only used in internet transactions. It's actually quite convenient actually.
The generic name for this is a prepaid credit card. They seem to exist around the world, but I've never seen them being sold in any shops where I live.
AFAIK, this was one of the first ever 'disposable' credit cards to come out. It's pre-paid - you get a new credit card number whenever you top-up. Great way to make a large, once off purchase (e.g. a new MacBook mmmmmm) that is over your existing card's credit limit.
I find it easier to overpay the credit card account, so that you generate positive (or negative, depending on how you look at it) balance. The bank's usually unhappy about it, but it works.
This was one of the cheapest ways of turning my cash in my Irish bank account into cash in foreign countries. By loading up my Bank of Ireland credit card, I could withdraw cash from ATMs at Mastercard's exchange rate, and no other fees (or with no loss at all if in Euro). Since the cash advance isn't actually a loan, BoI doesn't charge interest on it. Unfortunately, the same trick doesn't work for most banks in other countries; almost every other bank charges interest on cash advances even when the bill is already paid, much less paid before due.
The amount of money held in a payclick account must be between $20 to $1000 and withdrawals to a bank account are not allowed. Payclick also supports recurring transactions
WTFno. That's not a PayPal competitor. That's a way to guarantee that you spend money - a credit card company's wet dream.
this is a no way a paypal alternative. in paypal you pay to arbitary email. and in this "alternative" - you actually need to go thru some screening process to open seller account..
Precisely. PayPal's core functionality is the ability for anyone to receive money. The ability to give money to a select few electronically is 1970s era technology.
As a Canadian who uses PayPal to pay for things directly from my bank account, I'll believe it when I see it. No PayPal "alternative" that I've heard of will let me do this.
Agreed, as a Canadian, we are usually a few years behind, and as for Visa, almost every time I use my credit card online I have to reset my "verified by visa" password, because I can't remember the password from the last 20 times I had to reset it, but luckily all it takes to reset it is the skill testing question of what is my mothers maiden name.
So I have to go throught this BS reset every time, and whenever someone wants to steal my credit card, all they need is my mothers maiden name.
What irks me though is that visa knows this is a security flaw, I wish I had the paper to link the fully explains what isn't immediately obvious.
When they ask for your mother's maiden name, you should map that phrase to "your password, unique to this company" in your head. Now it's not quite as insecure.
The only time I've ever had to use Verified by Visa is when ordering online at Future Shop. What's worse is that Future Shop would be a GREAT place to use Interac Online so I could pay straight out of my bank account, but so far the only place I've seen that offers it is NCIX.
As someone who has a credit card only because I need one to pay for things online, this bothers me to no end. Get with it guys!
Good troll post, with the up votes it looks like there are other trolls here. If you're going to say something like this then please back it up with some data.
Visa is a financial giant within the credit card industry. I'm sure they have created a secure platform or they would be held liable for any mis-appropriated funds. Also,
Visa would be aware of the fact that any bad press regarding a hacked platform would cause users not to use it. So I'm fairly certain they would have taken their time to implement a robust security design, even though you have misgivings about the .aspx URL.
Australia: Testing ground for new products, sideways move for past-it executives, and loads of pretty beaches. Come use our internet while we still have it.
it's pretty different; for one thing, they want people to use it to pay for downloadables. You can, ~in theory~ sell downloadables through Paypal, but just try selling $100k in downloadables and withdrawing the money from your Paypal account...
I wonder why there hasn't been a credit card company that offered a version of this with the option to prepay or link to a bank account or existing credit card. That way people could shop online and merchants who are already set up to accept credit cards wouldn't have to modify their code to interface with yet another payment API. The credit card companies would still get money from the fees charged to merchants, and they could also earn interest on the balances users keep.