Heads up! We share savvy shopping and personal finance tips to put extra cash in your wallet. Mobile Nations may receive a commission from The Points Guy Affiliate Network*
One of the exciting things that Apple Card is going to support is Virtual Account Numbers. This will help secure Apple Card customers when we are making a non-Apple Pay purchase online using our Apple Card. However, this feature is not new! Virtual account numbers have been around for several years from a few different credit card issuers.
A credit card offering virtual account numbers allows any of us to generate new credit card numbers tied to the main account. These virtual numbers can be given time and amount limits to help us avoid fraud. If you’re looking to stay as secure as possible, here are some of the top credit cards that offer Virtual Account Numbers.
Capital One Virtual Numbers via Eno
Capital One offers Virtual Account Numbers for eligible consumer credit cards through its Eno program. It’s free with no registration or commitment and allows its users to generate temporary merchant-specific credit card numbers that link to your real credit card number. With Eno you can create as many virtual card numbers as you want right from your browser and Capital One will track all of your numbers for you. It’s actually done using a browser extension and is currently available on Chrome, Firefox, and Edge (sorry, Safari users).
Safer shopping
Capital One® Quicksilver® Cash Rewards Credit Card
In addition to supporting virtual numbers, this card earns 1.5% cash back on every purchase, with no exceptions, no limits, and no annual fee. What’s more, the card is also currently offering a $150 cash bonus after you spend $500 on purchases within 3 months.
Additional options:
Bank of America offers Virtual Account Numbers for eligible Visa and MasterCard credit cards through its ShopSafe program. And just like Eno from Capital One, it doesn’t require any additional fees and allows its users to generate a temporary credit card number. You can set a valid through date of up to a year, and even use the virtual number for recurring purchases.
Another option is Citi, which also offers virtual account numbers to their customers for free. Whenever you are shopping online, over the phone, or even through the mail, you can sign in online and generate a random virtual account number for your Citi card. Citi will include all of the purchases notated with the virtual account number used on one monthly statement. Not all Citi cards are able to take advantage of this feature. You’ll need to login to check eligibly for your specific card.
More on Apple Card:
Apple has already contributed huge advancements to secure shopping online and in-store with their roll-out of Apple Pay, which hides your card information behind biometrics like Face ID and Touch ID, as well as creating virtual account numbers and one-time purchase IDs for all of your Apple Pay transactions.
However, non-Apple Pay purchases have still been a struggle to keep secure for a lot of card providers, and Apple is hoping to change that with Apple Card. They are looking to accomplish the fight against online and offline purchase fraud in a few ways. First, the physical titanium Apple Card will display no account number, expiration date, or CCV (the three or four digit card verification value). Instead, the physical card will only store the last four digits of the card number into the mag-stripe, hiding all of the other card information in the Secure Enclave on your iPhone. The only way to access this information will be in the Wallet app, which is protected by Face ID or Touch ID.
For online purchases, Apple Card will use a virtual account number and CCV code. Cardholders will be able to manually reset the virtual account number, which is great if you use your Apple Card at a place you don’t trust too highly. The CCV code will also be dynamically generated and required, which will make stealing your card number almost impossible.
Stay secure
Shopping securely online, over the phone, and through the mail with a credit card is more and more difficult as fraudsters are getting more creative in their ways of stealing your card information. Virtual account numbers are a fantastic way to ensure that you stay protected, and these cards offer not only that but some valuable rewards as well. Find one that rewards you the best way for your lifestyle and have peace of mind that you will stay secure.
Source of the article – iMore