The estimated reading time for this post is 3 seconds
Note: Highlight to Tweet is enabled - Just highlight text to easily share the selected content to Twitter!
From time to time I have business ideas, and recently I have captured my ideas and saving them in a folder on Evernote. Like most good business ideas, I usually encounter a problem or inefficient process and think that there has to be a better way. This particular idea I am writing about is something that I have encountered a few times in the past, but don’t think I will ever build a solution myself, so I’m putting it out there in case someone else can build a solution. I would be interested in supporting anyone that has a good solution, but at this time I really only have a problem without a good solution.
I’m calling this a Virtual Credit Card, but I’m not sure if that is correct. The problem I encounter is that I have most of my bills paid through automated payments on each merchants website using my credit card. I’m not the best at writing down each site that I have my credit card associated with the payment. When the credit card expires, or a fraud occurred on my card, or I just change credit cards I have to go back to each website and update my credit card information. Because I didn’t write down all the locations of my usage of my credit card, I inevitably forget to change one or two websites and my payment was declined. My idea would be to allow a person to enter a virtual credit card number into these sites which would just be a reference to a service where I would be able to manage my credit cards. Instead of changing all the different websites that I have associated with a particular credit card, I would just have to update the mapping of the virtual credit card to my real credit card number through this Virtual Credit Card service.
I know that there are some options, like Paypal, but a lot of merchants do not accept Paypal and it is difficult to set up automatic recurring payments through Paypal (at least it has when I have tried it in the past). Maybe there is a different service that would solve my problem? If so, I would love to hear about it.
Another problem I can see is that Visa/Mastercard/Discover give numbers that have meaning, and companies can check whether a particular credit card number is valid or invalid. This Virtual Credit Card service would need to be universally accepted to be useful to a large population of users, and I’m not sure how that would work.
Although I haven’t researched it much yet, EntroPay looks promising, but it looks like you have to pre-pay an account first from which the Virtual Credit Card would debit. It’s a high cost to fund the Entropay account (4.95%) but the benefit is that you receive an actual Visa credit card number which eliminates the issue of having merchants accept a different kind of payment service. This service is really close to something that would interest me, except the pre-pay requirement, and the high cost to fund the account.
General Disclaimer
The content contained in this blog represents the opinions of Ray Bonneau and RayBonneau.com. Ray Bonneau or persons posting on RayBonneau.com may hold either long or short positions in securities of various companies discussed in the blog. The commentary in this blog in no way constitutes a solicitation of business or investment advice. Readers should do their own homework and research when making investment decisions. The blog is intended solely for the entertainment of the reader, and the author.
Ray Bonneau is a participant/publisher in certain affiliate programs, including Amazon's Associates Program. Ray Bonneau will earn a small commission when a link to an affiliate site is clicked and a purchase is made. Affiliate programs help Ray Bonneau earn money to pay for this blog. Readers do not pay any extra money when clicking and using affiliate links on RayBonneau.com
