Reasons: No risk of credit card info misuse (by vendor), I only need username and password and I get certainly at least some kind of receipt for accounting.
It's a shame virtual cards never got more traction through the CC industry. For those who aren't familiar, some banks/cards offer you a tool that let's you set an arbitrary spend and expiration date (+2-12 months usually) and then generate a credit card number (with CVC) with those attributes (Bank of America branded theirs "SafeShop" for one example). Since it's a fully backed card number it'll transparently work on any site a normal CC would, but it cannot be charged more then the small limit (so you can set it just to the checkout price of one item and it's done), it can be trivially cancelled at will (useful for fighting dark pattern subscription services), etc (some of them can bind to merchant too). It's very effective for preventing misuse from online purchases. However for whatever reason it never seems to have spread or evolved really. BoA never added it to their mobile app for example, which seems like the most logical place, but rather kept it as a little Flash tool tucked away in their website. Plenty of banks do not offer it at all, and it never got much PR. It is more work to use and while that could have been reduced through better UIs (mobile again could really help there) it would always have been somewhat more work.
Maybe options like Apple Pay/Google Pay will ultimately fill that role, since they're essentially an automated version of the above (tolkenized per-purchase card numbers). It'd be nice if the industry would work harder though on some standards for the hardware ecosystem needed.
Have a look at Revolut (however, you need a monthly subscription to use disposable virtual cards).
I also social engineered my way in to my own account via a brand new Twitter account, so ... beware.
For something small or temporary, I might overlook it. For something that has direct access to my bank account, no go. They need to accept some liability if they want that level of access to my financial life.
To be fair, Paypal has an arbitration agreement too. But, if you're using Paypal as justification for your own policies, that's not exactly a strong starting position.
Despite what the banks claim, they usually will NOT prevent recurring payments from being honored. Even if you don't have enough money in your account. (The bank will just collect it from you)
I used to use a service called Entropay, which would actually let you pre-pay money into a disposable virtual credit card. But banks would never let you do that, because it would undermine their own system.
90% of the problems that I have had over the last ten years have not been with credit card info being stolen, but with misleading or outright fraudulent behavior by merchants, and BoA virtual credit cards have all of the exact same problems as real credit cards and will do nothing to protect you.
You will still have to always keep an eye out that 90 days later you aren't charged again for the same thing. And you are still on the hook for charges made by the merchant you paid, and it is up to you to dispute any charges through the same process as with a regular credit card.
What I want, is to give a merchant a credit card number, pre load that number with $30, have them charge it, and then be completely done with it. This especially makes sense for low stakes low cost recurring monthly payments. I should just be able to stop paying a $5/month fax service that I never use, and have them terminate my service. Banks would never let you do that. Services that used to let you do that have been mostly shut down.
I understand that I may be technically agreeing to pay each month with recurring payments, but the onus should be on the provider to stop servicing me if I cannot come up with the money. The system that we have today for recurring payments makes no sense.
I simply want to be in control of how much money gets taken from me. It is the same reason I take bills out of my wallet to pay a clerk at a store, and do not simply hand them my wallet and ask them to take the money out. I don't care if I can call the bank and dispute things with them, I want to be the one to dole out the money for the transaction.
And I haven't tested this, but apparently if some scummy vpn service you did a 30 day trial with a few months ago claims you owe them, and you miss the window to dispute it, or the bank sides with the merchant, the bank is obligated to go after your money from other accounts.
No thanks.
Privacy.com offers this service, but you have to pay from your bank account.
All I want, is the digital equivalent of a personal check.
A one time promise to pay money. If the merchant has a dispute with me, or thinks I owe them more money, they are free to sue me.
If my utility company wants automatic recurring payments, I have to sign paperwork which makes it very clear that I am authorizing recurring bank transfers.
The system we have now makes no sense at all.
They block charges over the limit.
You can "turn off" a card after you use it.
They have "single use" cards that turn off automatically two minutes after the first charge.
You can set the spending limit on single use cards or for non-single use cards on a per month basis or per year basis.
You can use any billing name and address with the merchant.
the minor annoyance for recurring payments is totally worth not having to actively be on guard for random people withdrawing from my account.
why is this so hard? i suppose its because of some perverse incentives that I dont understand.
You are not responsible for card-not-present fraud (without 3D Secure). You can dispute any fraudulent charge with your bank, and I’d bet good money the bank has actually better customer service in that regard compared to PayPal.
I worked for a fraud detection company in the UK that existed precisely because chargebacks work so well, here. So this is definitely news to me.
Don't get me wrong, sometimes the networks rules are stronger than the laws for other reasons. Last I checked in the US the customer was legally out $50 in case of fraud, but all networks reduced it to zero figuring if they were already out potentially a large sum of money they may as well eat the last $50 too for goodwill reasons.
I'm not quite sure what pattern the agent recognized, but she sure didn't like it and they weren't going to put up with it for a second. I'm not sure why it wouldn't be in their interest to be this vigilant globally...
It's a pain in the butt when it happens.
A prime example was when I subscribed to NYTimes, and a few months later wanted to cancel. The only way to cancel was to make a phone call, navigate a phone tree, and wait for an agent. That was absurd, not only because I'm international and find it less convenient to call a US number... but particularly because I signed up and created the subscription online. NYT knew what they were doing by making it difficult for people to cancel.
With PayPal in between, I was able to easily just terminate the agreement. NYT could no longer suck money out of my card.
NYT has since upgraded to allow managing your subscription online, including upgrade/downgrade/cancellation.
The last time I had to deal with card fraud, my bank was extremely reasonable to work with and didn't hesitate at all when disputing the charges. But the process can still be fairly annoying. Having to wait for the card to be replaced, having to move any auto billpay using that card to another, etc.
With very few exceptions, if the merchant isn't using a decent external payment platform, you might as well be posting your credit card information on Hacker News. I'd much rather run my card information through PayPal if that is the only option other than entering card information on the merchants dodgy website.
Most banks can be decent to deal with, and one can certainly take steps to mitigate the impact of it when it does happen (Like not using your debt card for purchases, ever. Using a different credit card for bill payments vs online purchases vs offline purchases, etc.) But I can understand why people would prefer to avoid card fraud when they have the option to do so.
I am not surprised. You have obviously never stood in Ethiopia or wherever and have gotten a call from your bank: " This is the fraud department, unfortunately we have to block your card but we send you a new one".
Trick question: How many CC do you carry at a given time?
Hint: based from experience it should be at LEAST 3.
If the bank is bad it’s one thing but then the solution is to choose a better bank, not hack around the problem with a (shady) middleman like PayPal.
When I was abroad one guy was enjoying a decent McDonalds meal in the states with a cloned card.
International consumer finance is a mess. Not everybody who shops on the Internet is a US citizen with a credit card account in a first-rate bank. There are other options.
I got all the money they'd charged back but it was still a stressful time because I didn't have any other card at the time.
For me, Paypal looks disgusting. Like it's stuck in 2002. I'd much rather buy if there's Apple Pay via Safari or Gumroad or literally anything else.