Revolut launches disposable virtual cards

Fintech startup Revolut is launching a new type of virtual cards — disposable cards for online purchases. While you could already generate additional virtual cards for a fee, this is a different kind of virtual card as it gets destroyed after each transaction.

If you usually shop on Amazon or if you have a Spotify subscription, those services first asked you to enter your card number and they keep charging the same card.

But what if you end up on a dodgy-looking site but you really want to buy that funny pair of socks? Chances are you won’t ever purchase anything againt on this website. And you don’t want to give them your actual card information.

Now, you can generate a virtual card in Revolut and enter it on that weird site. After the transaction, Revolut will disable this card forever. If the website wants to charge you again, the transaction will fail.

And if you’re on a shopping spree, Revolut generates a new disposable card seconds after the existing one is used. So you won’t be able to use those disposable cards for online subscriptions and recurring payments. But disposable cards can be useful to prevent fraud.

There’s no change to permanent cards. When you create a Revolut account, you get a virtual card for free. You can get a physical card for £5/€6 or you can subscribe to a Revolut Premium account to get it for free. Additional cards (physical or virtual) cost £5/€6, with a maximum of five cards in total.

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