By on November 19, 2007

Paypal Introduces Virtual Credit Card

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PayPal has partnered with MasterCard to release the PayPal Secure Card. It’s a virtual credit card that generates a unique credit card number for each online transaction. Nothing new here, except as of tomorrow you can download software so you can easily use the service on any site, regardless if they accept Paypal or not. PayPal has been testing the feature with 3 million of its customers this past year.

To the merchant it looks like any other credit card payment, but the funds actually come out of the customer’s PayPal account. It offers a lot of convenience for customers. Your information is stored with your PayPal account so you won’t have to fill out a new form with every purchase. That’s a feature that Google Checkout has had over PayPal – without requiring a download.
How it Works

Mashable’s Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins was a beta tester and described how it works (I found myself wanting a video showing me, but after a search on YouTube and PayPal’s web site, I settled on a written description):

  1. Install the PayPal software which includes a PayPal icon on your desktop.
  2. Click the icon when you want to buy something online and you get a randomly generated credit card number that is connected to your PayPal account.
  3. Your shipping and billing information is stored with your account so you don’t have to fill it out for each online merchant you visit.

No word on if you can earn points, percentages, or other rewards on purchases. And there have been some problems mentioned, like how difficult it is to remove unauthorized charges from merchants. It sounds like there are still some issues to work out on the customer service end.


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7 comments on “Paypal Introduces Virtual Credit Card”

  1. Jonathan Dingman Says:

    November 19th, 2007 at 12:58 pm

    This seems like old news. I’ve had my VCC for quite some time now — even though it’s being used inside a VM of my OS X install, but I’ve had it for a while.

    What makes this different than what they’ve already had released to the general public?

  2. Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins Says:

    November 19th, 2007 at 2:34 pm

    Hey… thanks for reading. To answer your questions:
    There are no reward points, percentages, or other incentives to use it, as far as I can tell.

    @Jonathan Dingman: This is the same thing you and I already have. It’s news because tomorrow is the “official launch day.”

  3. Selbourne Designing Says:

    November 19th, 2007 at 11:19 pm

    What happens with the generated CC no. can it be re-used/misused later on?

    All of sudden Paypal is going full blast with offering useful services. The transfer of funds to bank accounts in India have become a big hit.

  4. Israel Says:

    November 20th, 2007 at 12:50 am

    I used that card a few years ago and it was a pretty smooth transaction.

  5. minicix Says:

    November 20th, 2007 at 11:47 am

    PayPal started officially operate here in Turkey a month or two ago but users had trouble with withdrawing money to cards other than Visa, now its Mastercard only, (in this post it was not mentioned) Cant PayPal make it work with both cards?

  6. J Says:

    November 25th, 2007 at 10:41 am

    A time will come very soon when PayPal will have to make it easy for everyone, everywhere to make withdraws at local banks.

  7. Omar Szida Says:

    October 12th, 2008 at 8:27 am

    Nice one!