I don’t know if the following PayPal story qualifies as news. I’m putting it in the news category, but reluctantly so. It all sounds very familiar with a slight twist to me. PayPal has been providing one off Mastercard numbers for quite some time, not to mention full fledged plastic cards.

The new software utility, called the PayPal Secure Card, recognizes when a user lands on an e-commerce checkout page and automatically helps the user fill out the payment form in a secure way that also offers stepped-up fraud protections.

From the promo screenshot it looks like this feature will be part of a required toolbar, rather than something that doesn’t eat up more browser space. If that’s the way it works, I don’t like it already. I don’t want to have to install some space hogging toolbar for one feature. If this feature can be shoehorned into the existing StumbleUpon toolbar, great. While on this and since eBay owns Skype let’s have one toolbar that does StumbleUpon, eBay/PayPal and Skype. Save space, don’t try to liberate more browser real estate.

Duncan Riley at TechCrunch writes:

On the security front it also provides an alternative to using your actual credit card online, a secure way of using your credit card (if linked to your Paypal account) without the risk of your real details being disclosed.

Security? Will it be easy and convenient to contest bogus charges? How long will the secure created credit card number live and what consumer protections will be in place?

In March a comment here by Nelson Hochberg pointed out how difficult and convoluted it was to contest charges for these virtual cards with PayPal (emphasis mine):

The Paypal literature states that a unique credit card number is generated for each transaction implying that the and is good for only one transaction. However each generated credit and is good for three months allowing unlimited transactions up to the total amount in all of the credit cards, debit cards and bank accounts listed with your Paypal account. I had two vendors charge my Paypal Virtual Debit Card for more than the one charge I authorized.

It took me one and one half hours on the phone with Paypal to find out I have to download a hard to find form, print it, fill it out and mail it to Paypal to contest a charge. All of my credit cards allow me to contest a charge over the phone. I am still waiting to find out if Paypal will refund the unauthorized transactions. (At the end of this post are the Paypal instructions for downloading and using the form to contest transactions)

It took me another hour on the phone to find out that I can cancel a virtual debit card through a supervisor. You have to call Paypal and request a supervisor to do this.

Hopefully PayPal has refined this process for the PayPal Secure Card because if vendors can charge more than authorized and it’s too unwieldy a process reversing these charges, customers will revolt. I’ve had nothing but positive experiences with my virtual PayPal Mastercard to date and I’ve used it a bunch. I don’t have any problem using the card at various websites, have not been victimized or scammed yet, and I earn 1% cashback (pictured) every time I use it. Will using this new PayPal Secure Card pay me 1% cash back? What are the benefits to me using the PayPal Secure Card instead?

Just as with the Amazon Kindle e-Reader in the last post, I have more questions than answers. Guess we’ll both learn more in the coming days.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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