I’ve had a MBNA credit card for almost 10 years and have been very pleased with their service. Over time they have slowly inched my credit limit skyward and yesterday I noticed it was up to $42,000. So, I logged onto their web site to find the “lower my limit” button and couldn’t find it. What I found instead was the coolest new feature called ShopSafe.
ShopSafe is a free service that allows you to generate a temporary credit card number, with specified time and spending limits. The number is only valid for one merchant, with a capped limit and for a pre-defined number of months. How cool is that? Anyhow, I ended up calling them to get my credit limit drastically reduced. Since I never carry balances, I can’t imagine needing such an absurdly high limit.
Today I’m putting together a computer system for a client and needed to purchase $1,200 worth of computer equipment from a vendor I have never dealt with. Rather than giving them one of my credit card numbers, I logged onto my MBNA account, created a one time ShopSafe number with a $1300 limit, and gave that to them. Once they authorize the transaction, the number will not work for any other merchant, and they can’t charge me for any more than the limit I set. That’s very, very cool.
You could also use it for recurring transcactions, such as a magazine subscription. You could set the max amount to the annual subscription limit and a 12 month time limit. After your subscription expires, your vendor cannot overbill you or automatically re-subscribe you without you giving them a new number. Cool. 🙂