Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Originally Posted By: Touring5
Another cool tool is Virtual Account numbers from Citi. They allow you to log in, and generate a 1-time use credit card number (you can specify a dollar limit and time limit) - that can only be used online or over the phone.
This, while seemingly useful, ended up getting us in trouble once.
We used such one-time generated credit card number once with Discover to buy some concert/event tickets. The tickets needed to be picked up in person, and at pickup time, they wanted to see the credit card that was used to make the purchase. Well, guess what... the number on the card was different from the one-time generated card number.
Yeah, you have to keep an eye out for something like that where you might need to show the card to pick up the product purchased. I've bought stuff online and selected the in store pickup option, and it says you need to bring the CC you purchased the products on to pick the items up. I've always just printed out the one time use CC and explained to them that the print out is of the card and the card doesn't exist b/c it's a virtual one-time use card. I've never had a problem doing that. Once they see the number's match, they're good with it.
Yeah, it's an extra step, but it's always worked for me and it keeps my CC number from being stored in places where I don't know what type of security they're using, or I think they might be a prime target for people trying to steal CC numbers.