OK, which one of you stole my credit card...

[mikho]

We have a bank here in Sweden (Swedbank) that let its customers make temporary e-cards with a payment limit and a short lifetime.


I used to use that service very often when I was a customer with that bank.

 

[nunim]

I remember PayPal used to issue temporary CC numbers that would pull right from the account balance for a single transaction.  Might be worth checking to see if they still do this.

They don't, which is too bad because it was  an excellent program.  Many banks offering this kind of thing, I know Citibank does. Prepaid cards are a bit more tricky because if you go the regular route and buy prepaid visa's you'll end up with a stack of  cards that each have a tiny balance left that's practically useless.  If you buy a reloadable card then you run the same risk as using a regular credit card since your card number isn't going to change except if your prepaid card does get stolen the policies are probably worse then a regular CC.

It looks like Google  Wallet may offer one time use cards : https://support.google.com/wallet/answer/2740044?hl=en

Seems like Discover, CitiBank and BOA offer disposable accounts: http://itthing.com/disposable-credit-card-numbers

If anyone anyone finds something  else please let me know because I'm still trying to find something that was as good as the PayPal one.  I have Discover and Citibank but it seems to be only for CitiBank creditcards & nobody really accepts Discover, especially in Canada.

 

[Dylan]

I've had a debit card number I never even used online stolen, presumably by some unscrupulous employee in a brick-and-mortar retailer. It's not fun, obviously, but disputing a charge (or charges) is stupidly easy -- and that's if the bank doesn't catch the activity before you even see it, which they usually do.

I just always use a credit card for purchases now, rather than a debit card, so there's no chance of me temporarily being out any money. I used to use temporary account numbers but it's such a non-issue with credit cards I don't even bother anymore.