Now-a-days, credit-cards are mostly used in payment mechanisms for both business-to-business and business-to-consumer commerce. Daily billions of dollars of transactions are done through credit-card transaction, and in different types of databases, these transaction records are stored. For users convenience, credit-card information is stored by many e-commerce websites. Users would not prefer to enter the credit information for each transaction due to these sites will be used by users multiple times over a period of time.
Virtual credit-cards can be used in online stores. Randomly generated substitute account number is used by virtual credit card in place of your actual credit card number. To buy the goods and services through phone and mail also it can be used, but it cannot be used for offline purchase or direct store purchases, a traditional plastic card is required for these purchases.
You have no need to give out your real credit-card number in online shopping with this free service.
Call up your credit-card company and ask for a virtual credit card number when you are going to buy something from unscrupulous merchants. After single use, the disposal number will be expired, it prevents merchants from signing you up for added or recurring charges. These virtual numbers are available to Discover, Paypal, Citibank, Bank of America customers. This software has different names in different banks. Bank of America calls it as Shopsafe, City bank calls it as Virtual Account Number, Discover calls as Secure Online Account Number. The expiration date and maximum amount is allowed for a virtual card can be configured by you. After using this once, the card is tied to the merchant where it was used, and again no one can use this elsewhere.
Paypal no longer offers single-use numbers.