Earlier this year I set up some of my payments to be done through Privacy.com, which creates virtual credit cards for you. My bank doesn’t offer this service.
I really like it. I can specify limits on $$ or number of transactions for each virtual card.
I’m using it mostly for subscriptions that renew annually or monthly.
While I miss out on the “rewards” from using my main credit card, I feel much more secure using these virtual credit cards.
I recently had a fraud issue on my main card. It was caught because I have alerts. But the card was cancelled and replaced, which meant I had to go and re-do any payments that are made on that credit card.
I like that the virtual cards limit amount of $$ or transactions – I do get an alert when a payment is made, but a fraudulent $500 transaction just won’t go through at all.
I wish regular banks would do more for customer security – do more than just 2FA on your phone, and add these virtual credit cards.
Have you heard bad things about Plaid? I’m not aware of any problems.
Also, I have a credit union account that I use for Privacy, not my main bank account. So I keep enough money there to cover any privacy expenses.
So far, privacy has been fine for me.
Just one issue but it is likely with my credit union – every few months it lists my bank (funding source) as “expired” and a transaction gets declined. I have notifications on, so I find out immediately that a Privacy.com transaction was delined, and I know why. I have to either refresh the funding source so that it’s active again, or if that doesn’t work, delete it and re-enter it, and it works fine. The transaction is re-tried and goes through.
I’ve talked with Privacy about this and they said it’s not on their end – that the bank is apparently expiring the permission. But it’s easily fixed. I also don’t mind because it keeps me on my toes to log in and check the activity on privacy rather than ignore it.
Overall it’s been great for subscriptions, app payments (like parking apps), and purchases/donations where I don’t want the vendor to keep/store my credit card. I don’t do payments through my phone’s Google wallet - don’t really trust my cc info there. The privacy.com cards can be created to specify the number or amount of transactions, and it’s specific to that vendor, so even if stolen, nobody can go use it at Walmart.
One minor downside is that I don’t get credit card rewards for these purchases/payments, but that’s OK. You can’t have everything! I value the security more.