Disposable/reloadable credit card?

November 7, 2022 10:15 PM

I'd like to have a disposable or reloadable credit card for online purchases. I'm a sucker for dodgy Facebook gadget ads, and also want to buy the occasional adult material online without it showing up in my regular checking account. Years ago I used preloaded cards that you bought at a checkout stand, but they had some significant fees. Has the technology or market for that changed at all in the last decade? TL;DR - Easiest way to make online purchases, including porn, that I don't have to worry about being tied to my main bank account and also rebilling that I can't turn off?
posted by anonymous to Technology (5 answers total)

Would where you are have debit cards that act as credit cards? I have one that is MC-backed: Bigpay. The idea is Mastercard is the payment architecture they're hopping on but you're not paying on credit. Reloading in my country is also painless with no additional fees (I can top up via bank transfer/cash transfer/E-wallet or charging to an actual credit card). This is my standard international travel and daily lunch card, for similar reasons like yours.

... Ah apparently they're called Virtual Credit Cards in the US?
posted by cendawanita at 10:32 PM on November 7, 2022

There are plenty of reasons not to like them, but both CashApp and PayPal can work for this. They don't charge for transferring money from your bank account to your balance, don't charge account maintenance fees, and offer debit cards you can use for purchases anywhere that accept Visa/MC. (My recollection is that the Cash Card is a Visa and the PayPal debit card is a MasterCard)
posted by wierdo at 4:04 AM on November 8, 2022

So, I'm not recommending this particular company per se, but one appeal of the relatively new X1 credit card is its ability for its holder to generate apparently endless virtual cards for one-off use. I had thought of getting that card because the idea of having a 3% flat-rate card is appealing to me (3% back if you spend $15k/year, which I think can include rent payments via Plastiq: even with the 2.85% Plastiq fee, you end up financially ahead with 3% rewards, which is crazy to me). Anyway, though, I didn't jump on getting the X1 immediately and now I've been hearing some criticism of it on Reddit. So read around if you choose to get it, as always. But I guess the broader point is that perhaps there are more credit cards companies who also let you give our unlimited virtual card numbers - or maybe not, I think that might be X1's whole schtick, but it might be worth a look...
posted by ClaireBear at 5:14 AM on November 8, 2022

you could use Privacy for some of this.. there's a browser extension that will generate a card number for you at checkout for each payee. But be advised that the payee isn't (effectively) obscured when the charge eventually hits your bank account - they add a bit to it to say that the charge is a Privacy.com charge but the payee name is also there. (In other words, it shows up like "PRIVACY.COM - JOES CRAB SHAK" if I paid through Privacy.com at Joe's Crab Shack. PayPal works similarly, and so do virtual card numbers AFAIK.) So, if you want your purchase to be totally obfuscated when it hits your bank account, it won't work, but you could use it for the dodgy FB ad things or trials that require a credit card number to start. I can't speak to things like reloadable Visa/MC/etc. gift cards (other than that you can't use them in places that leave an open auth, like a restaurant, generally).
posted by mrg at 6:50 AM on November 8, 2022

Paypal used to offer a service called Paypal Key, but apparently it's discontinued.

Seems Privacy.com is what you need, as you can create new cards, set spending limit on each as well as lock it to a merchant, so even if that number leaked it won't do anyone any good. The free tier is fine for personal use, If you want to hide transaction details ("discreet merchant") you need to pay for Pro which is $10 a month, but you get 1% back which may offset the monthly cost.
posted by kschang at 3:46 AM on November 9, 2022