Hi guys, I’m new to the forum so I’m sorry if this post is in the wrong place.
Considering virtual cards are designed to help you pay for something without giving your physical cards details, I think it might also help to be able to set a spending cap to prevent additional money being taken out after a purchase.
If the place the person is buying from is somewhere they’re unsure is completely safe, it might seem a bit more convenient to be able to prevent any additional money coming out from the card up to a certain daily/monthly limit, especially as the source of money for a virtual card is your current account balance.
The only solution I can think of right now for one-off purchases is to make the card solely for that single transaction and then to delete it so that no further funds can be taken out.
This would also help for monthly subscriptions by making sure that you could set a limit for the virtual card that is equal to the amount you would normally expect to pay. That way, if you were charged more, it wouldn’t go through and you’d have time to check how much the subscription had increased by.
+1 To this. Whole reason I got monzo plus was for virtual cards and for their use online, yet I can’t help but think their usability is hindered by the fact we cannot limit them to certain amounts.
I’d hope it would be top feature on their priority stack since in advertising the feature they have a “Dodgy Shops” category, yet without being able to set spending limits there is no protection from getting your account rinsed without having to delete the card, and if I like the service from one of these “Dodgy Shops” I may want to continue my subscription to their service meaning either I set up a new virtual card and go through the hassle of updating payment information or update with my actual monzo card.
Ah that makes sense. If it’s a recurring payment Monzo could use the pre-existing feature which shows the amount you’re about to be charged for a direct debit, and could perhaps notify the user if it exceeds the amount assigned to the virtual card.
Does that sound like a reasonable way it could work?
I see your point, however I do not believe it to be that much of an issue. Say I have a spending limit on a subscription card. I know how much monthly to set that limit and if that limit is reached before all subscriptions have been paid for then one of these services have either over charged, or something else has gone wrong.
I don’t see using virtual cards for more serious purchases such as a credit agreement with a credit provider that I’m obliged to pay with a direct debit, maybe this can be something monzo can stop happening with virtual cards on their end, but more for services where if a payment bounces because the limit has been reached the worst that would happen is my netflix account needs updating and then I can look into why the limit was reached.
I really hope it’s a top feature on their priority list too. You explained the current issue perfectly.
Even if the cards were treated like a separate pot with their own funds that would work, considering it would be separately identifiable from the current account as a source of funding, and could be used directly for payments, unlike the current model which can’t limit the amount a company can take from an account or pot over a period of time.
I’ve created several virtual cards - one for online, but another for “Junk” - which I put anything I want to be able to cancel quickly on - when I want payments to stop, I just delete the virtual card and the merchant doesn’t get any money, simple.
That’s a good option, but it then depends on the person deleting their virtual card before additional funds have been taken from the account, as Callum explained. The main issue comes from the fact that the funding of the card comes from your current account, which leaves your entire balance susceptible. A spending limit might potentially prevent more being taken out from your primary source, and keep it protected from untrusted merchants.
It’s still a great feature in it’s current form, yet having a junk card only really helps if for one merchant, and then the only protection it offers is not having to replace my monzo card if my account gets leaked with that provider.
Another scenario is that I may have many subs that I consider junk but only want to cancel one indefinitely, in that case I’d have to delete the card, create a new one, change payment on all my other junk subs, yet with a spending limit I can just lower the amount of that sub from the limit, and again if that limit is reached before all subs have been paid for that I wanted to keep then that merchant has charged for the sub again, another service has over charged or the whole reason for using virtual cards for junk purchases, the protection, has been broken and there is a hard block on how much that can be withdrawn from my main account.
I think the solution here is to be able to have one card where the card number, expiry and CVC are regenerated after each use. They would need to not work with subscription services etc. I believe Revolut have a similar one on their premium service.
That would work perfectly. For myself I personally would keep my subscriptions on my debit card, because if I’m willing to give the merchant money regularly they must be fairly established and safe. I did mention subscriptions benefiting from the spending limit in my initial post, but that was to cover all bases.
I think your suggestion would be a good starting point considering 9 times out of 10 a transaction from a merchant who has questionable safety would be a one-off purchase.
Perhaps just have a virtual card be able to take from a specific pot in the same way you can with Direct Debits. However, so get that this isn’t quite the same thing as it would really act a bit like a cash card that you preallocate money to.
There’s definitely potential for this, but I feel the only way that could truly work is to make it so that the pot is the primary source for the virtual card, as opposed to the debit card’s balance, which may become a bit more confusing to implement. What do you think?
As was said earlier by Monzo, if you have a card taking from a pot then the pot becomes a payment account and suddenly has a lot of regulatory controls needing to be applied to it.
To get around these regulatory controls, could the pot be part of the authorization process (i.e. Only authorise payment IF money is available in Pot, or other conditional criteria depending no how this could be designed) but the actual transaction shows in the main account thread, just like DD’s from Pots do?
