Online Virtual Cards

(Aaran McGuire) #1

Hi,

I’ve just stared using the Mondo Card… Its Great.

One thing I would like to see, and I’ve always wanted is the ability to create virtual cards for online transactions.

With my old/normal debit cards, every 6 months I need to have it replaced as all the numbers are damaged, and I cant see anything, but every time I do so I have to change 10+ online subscriptions. I’d love to be able to assign a randomly assigned card number that I only see once (or maybe I have one purely for trusted online sites) to each subscription service so I never have this issue again.

I think this could help for security too as, if the card number was used in a transaction thats not the company you expected you’d know exactly what merchant it was leaked from.

Thanks for the great card…

Freeze Card for Certain Merchants
Virtual 'Savings' Accounts
Card Security
Pay Directly From Personal, Joint & Savings - (One Card, Multiple Accounts)
Does Monzo offer a joint account?
Option of a spam card?
Please keep the prepaid cards
Unique card numbers for online merchants
Virtual Card Numbers, Controlled Payment Numbers
(Stuart Cameron) #2

I like this idea. Not sure how feasible it is from Mondo’s side.

A smilier idea is adding a plus and a tag when using your email to sign up to something. Then I know what companies send spam! (eg. stuart+mondo@anotherstudio.co)

(Aaran McGuire) #3

yh… Its certainly not a core feature, but would be cool in the future… I don’t know if banks pay for the card numbers… Another idea I thought of is if you could change the CCV number (given thats only for online transactions… and you could have it link to the merchant) I’m not sure of the solution but I’d like a way to give trust to online merchants thats a 1-1 relationship.

The perfect solution about be a oAuth type payment system, but that would have to be created at the Bank of England level… and have merchants support it (and all the banks buy into the system)

(Jose Cardoso) #4

Cahoot used to offer this feature when I was one of their customers years ago.

You logged in and a virtual card was created based on whatever amount you entered as the card’s limit. The card’s expiry period was set to one month and CVV digits were made available for sites that needed them.

A useful feature if you were ever dubious about making certain online transactions.

(Christopher Rex) #5

Wirecard does offer this service. And I don’t think its a big expense. I think normally they would just give mondo the option to offer a package to users.

i.e 1 physical card and 5 virtual cards.

but i don’t think it is really a cost issue with the virtual card, but more for stopping over-enthusiastic customers using a new card for every single thing they do. and having 100’s of virtual cards

(lee) #6

Isnt Apple Pay kind of a step on from the cahoot webcard. As in neither shared/s the actual data with the merchant but Apple Pay removes the need for the webcard anyway. Especially with them pushing it in safari that will pretty much resolve it?

(James Billingham) #7

It is a lot more sophisticated than the virtual card generators which used to be provided by banks, but yes same basic principle.

(Alex Sherwood) #8

Tom talked about enabling the creation of virtual cards in yesterday’s Periscope chat (there’s a link to the video in the post I’ve quoted).

(Alex Sherwood) #9

Just to keep everything tied together - I spotted this old comment Daniel, in the fraud team which talks about the ways that virtual cards could benefit them -

(Alex Sherwood) #10

The feasibility question’s been mentioned a couple of times, here’s some more insight into this, which Richard shared today -

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One Time Payment Buckets
Virtual 'Savings' Accounts
What We Know About the Current Accounts & Debit Cards / FAQ :bank: :credit_card: (open Wiki)
(Alex Sherwood) #11

Here’s some more detail on the use case for virtual cards, from a Monzo Security and Fraud engineer -

It’s always interesting to hear how adding these features can help Monzo prevent fraud, which ultimately benefits users too :thumbsup:

#12

On a related matter, sometimes (such as today!) I would like to have a virtual (legacy other bank) current account number (and sort code?) to provide to a third party. I realise it is hard to abuse a sort code/account number, but it doesn’t always feel right giving these away to one-off payees, who I perhaps don’t trust. Monzo Me helps get round this for smaller transactions with some people, but only for payment by card. Or could each account holder have two or three numbers, one of which is “money inbound only”?

From a money laundering/fraud perspective, the virtual account can still be traced to the primary Monzo account holder, and I suppose when account name becomes part of the payment check step, there will be less problems caused by re-use of account numbers?

(Chris Hinton) #13

I would love to see this - sometimes I don’t want to give out my main card details and being able to use a one-time or virtual card instead would be an absolute gamechanger. It would certainly cement me as a loyal Monzo customer!

(Alex Sherwood) #14

Daniel’s just confirmed that this is something he’s working on & shared a little bit of detail on how this will work :heart_eyes:

(Simon Hunter) #15

could this also work for instant issuing of cards?

e.g. i lost my card/it was stolen. you instantly issue me a new card that i can use online and/or add to android pay/apple pay/samsung pay?

(Alex Sherwood) #16

Potentially yes :heart_eyes:

Jonas mentioned how instant issuing could work a while ago in a podcast - for a slightly different use case but obviously the technology is the same -

#17

From experience with Apple Pay, as soon as my bank (Santander) cancelled my old card and said they were sending my new card the card in my Apple Wallet updated so could be used straight away.

Not sure if this is standard functionality of Apple Pay (and android/samsung etc.) or not.

(Simon Hunter) #18

Really?

I’ve read in bank and apple and android support that this doesnt happen -
but great if it does!

They all say you need to manually add your new card.

#19

That’s how it worked for me, as I say not sure if it’s just Santander or not, but was practically instantaneous from the guy saying my new card would be with me in a few days. He even specifically said I could carry on using Apple Pay.

Special purpose account numbers
#20

I came here to suggest exactly the same thing – Revolut have the option to add additional cards (£5 each) which can either be virtual or physical (same price for each for some reason). However at home in the UK I prefer to do everything through Monzo due to the better app interface and money management features.

Having just got a replacement card, it means changing card details on Amazon, Uber, Spotify etc, and it would be great to have an ‘un-losable’ virtual card which would still add all the spends to my Monzo totals…