✅ Virtual / Disposable Cards

I’m always skeptical of percentages. 30% of what…

True, they don’t give a baseline or a reference period. Poor journalism, really

For sure.

I have a degree in Marketing & Advertising and the lecturers would always state if your statistics are unremarkable, quote rounded up percentages instead.

In places I’ve worked stuff normally got rounded up to the nearest 10’s of percent too.

20.15% - that’ll be nearly 30% then.

With instant notifications & card freezing the percentage of fraud must already be extremely low. Those 30% mean nothing and IMO definitely aren’t worth the development time for such a feature.

I think the feature is there to be a bullet point on a list and a nice technical proof of concept (although legacy banks have already done this many years ago, albeit with a horrible user experience) more than anything else.

I’m not sure it’s as simple as that. There is a big convenience factor, knowing that a card number can never be used again.

I booked a course recently that uses your card details to charge you for the next term unless you notify them within the first five weeks that you don’t want to do the next term. A disposable card would have made them chase me for the money and good luck to them if they had. Now I have to remember to cancel instead.

Others must have similar experiences.

It may be more important in some markets than others though.

Hey everyone!

I’ve got an idea for people who prefer not to use their main cards for some online purchases. Monzo could introduce one-time cards. It would generate a card number, expiry date and CVV code. Just for one use

Let me know what you think and if it’s even possible:£

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Hey, hope you don’t mind but I’ve moved your post here to join the ongoing discussion :slight_smile:

Please, Monzo, make us happy - make Virtual Cards. They are so useful, simple and what is more important safe to use.

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I would very much like virtual cards and often look in envy at the US service called privacy.com, which allows you to create an arbitrary number of virtual cards for purchases.

Features I’d want:

  • Unique cards for each repeating payment service I subscribe to. Should be able to “lock” the card to a particular merchant so it can’t be used by anyone else, and also set a maximum amount per transaction, and maximum transactions per month. Such as setting my mobile phone bill card to allow one monthly transaction limited to £20.
  • Single use cards that are for one off purchases at websites I don’t intend to frequent again. For example, when, say, ordering items that aren’t from well known websites like Amazon.
  • And, maybe just for privacy ninjas, the ability to put an arbitrary name on the card. Monzo knows who I am, but that doesn’t mean that any website I order goods from needs to know my real name.

For me, a feature set like this would be deeply compelling.

Paying online can be annoying sometimes when the site doesn’t support Apple Pay or Google Pay for better security. So having the ability to create virtual cards via the Monzo app that can be single time use or for ongoing subscriptions that tie back to your original Monzo account could help with that.

  • multi use: the technology behind Apple Pay and Google Pay is that your card details are randomised before sending it to the merchant, so if something happened to the merchant’s backend system and card details were exposed, the user won’t be affected. If the virtual card was able to have a token system similar to those mobile payment systems then the user could copy and paste the randomly generated token from their virtual card to the website they’re intending to pay from. The user could open the Monzo app to generate the token, then copy it and paste it on the website they’re intending to pay from.

  • single time use: for websites you’re not sure about or for “trial” periods so you don’t need to worry about cancelling the card as you can set an expiration date for said card

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There is already a topic about this here, would have saved you some effort :wink:

@Webby53096 i have moved your post here to continue the conversation

Just to let you know another case when it might be handy, my amazon account was locked for some reason, and they (Amazon) have just told me in support that the only way to continue using amazon is to register another account with different phone number and different card.

So, this feature would be quite handy. Why is not it here already?

Just came across this idea and think it’s fab! I use burner emails all the time for similar reasons.

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It seems this may be on the cards for monzo plus:

Why would I have to pay for this feature and have to subscribe to plus, Virtual debit cards are a basic feature and free on Revolut so should be made available to everyone as standard on Monzo

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All of this is discussed in the topic @Jackcrwhitney linked to :slight_smile:

I also would like a unicorn wearing tap shoes.

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Fab, I’m happy for you :joy:

Revolut offer them free now? Last I saw they were part of their premium packages.

I think I got one free from them at one stage, but just having one free virtual card seems to defeat the point of having them in the first place :man_shrugging:

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