

How Do Virtual Cards Make Online Transactions Safer? The virtual card does not tie back in any way to the actual card number, and cannot be reverse-engineered to generate raw payment credential data. Virtual cards are a lot like the tokenized card numbers that get sent in digital wallet transactions, but the cardholder can use them just like a regular credit card number. The term “virtual card” refers to a credit card number that has been turned into an encrypted number that only works with a specific merchant or transaction. The only trouble is that not every issuer offers them, but with Google partnering up with Capital One, American Express, and other card brands, they could soon become much more accessible to the average consumer.

Virtual cards can protect cardholders by concealing their actual payment credentials and ensuring that the only data that gets transmitted to the merchant is a single-use number. Instead, they buy stolen card data in bulk on the dark web, and use card testing schemes to find out which of the credential sets are still usable. In order for a merchant to process a transaction on a customer’s credit card over the internet, they have to transmit all of the key payment credential data, and if a fraudster can get their hands on that data, they can easily use it to place unauthorized transactions until the card gets reported as stolen-and every fraudulent transaction will eventually turn into a costly chargeback for the merchant that processed it.Ĭredit card data theft is so widespread on the internet that most fraudsters don’t even bother stealing them themselves. How Can Merchants Benefit from Google’s Virtual Cards?Į-commerce has been dealing with credit card fraud since its inception.How Do Virtual Cards Make Online Transactions Safer?.How are Google’s new Virtual Cards going to work, and what does this mean for merchants? One way to address this problem is by using virtual card numbers that can’t be reused, and Google is now working with issuing banks and card networks to offer virtual cards for use on their devices and software platforms. Basic elements of a credit card’s functionality, like the account number, can be a major liability when fraudsters can steal and copy them with ease. Credit cards were invented in a world that is much less reliant on computers and digital communication, and this can be a problem at times.
