I don’t know why Citi doesn’t make a bigger deal about publicizing this feature of their credit cards, but they actually have an excellent security option which helps protect customers making online purchases. They mention it only in one paragraph here.
If you have a Citibank credit card, you can use the Virtual Account Number feature to generate temporary “alias” numbers to give out in place of your actual number. Why would you want to do that? Well, there are lots of reasons… read on and I’ll give you a few.
  
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First, the bad news. The terms of use of the Virtual Account Number service have a dark hidden secret. In essence, Citibank is allowed to update them at any time without ever notifying you of the change. Updates become effective immediately.
So, in theory, they could add something into the user agreement like:
There will be a $10 per transaction fee imposed on the use of any Virtual Account Number. In addition, the interest rate for charges will be 5% higher than your normal base rate.
Are they likely to do it? Probably not, but I’m sure any good attorney would advise us that anythings possible.
Now, on to the good news… The service is very easy to use.
- Log into the CitiCards.com site and find the link for Virtual Account Numbers.
- With one click, you can generate a random credit card number.
- Use that number whenever you make a purchase online.
So, why would you want to use this service when you’ve already got fraud protection built in?
- Lets say you want to buy a magazine subscription online (or any type of potentially recurring subscription). If you use your real card number they may try to auto-renew you down the road. Can’t do that with a disposable number!
- You want to order from a catalog or some other source that you have to mail in an order form with your credit card info included. Use a VAN in case someone intercepts the mail.
- Each virtual account number is set to expire at the end of the following month and can only be used at a single merchant. This means if someone steals it, the number can’t be used anywhere else.
- Fighting fraudulent charges is a pain in the ass! It takes time and energy and there is always at least a chance that you could lose in the end. Why not prevent it altogether?
Keep in mind the announcement in June 2005 that 40 million credit card numbers were hacked. If those people had used a Virtual Account Number they wouldn’t even break a sweat!
If you want to use this service you’ve got two options. They offer a download-able version for the PC which will automatically pop up and fill in check out forms for you, or they offer a Web based version that you can access online.
Go check it out at CitiCards.com.
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
I tried the virtual account number thing with Citicards and after clicking a button stating that I had read the thingamajiggy and agreed to sign my life away, it told me I had to “log in”. Log in where?!? Thinking I had to log out and then back in, I clicked on “generate accuont number” and I was back at square one.
I hate Citibank’s websites.
Emily,
I’m sorry you had that problem. I’m not that thrilled with their Web site or how it is organized either…
I just tried it out and it worked for me. There are two things which might be causing you a problem. After you sign your life away a small little login window pops up. That is what you are supposed to log into again. If you have popup blocking software on your computer you may have to disable it for the Citibank site.
The other thing is that the page uses JavaScript, so if you have that disabled you’ll need to turn it on.
Hope that helps,
John
Bless you for figuring that out. Oddly JavaScript was enabled, so it must have been the pesky pop-up detector.
Thanks!
Thank you that was a great post, I didnt know anything about the randomized numbers like that. I guess when dealing in such large numbers its smart to have everything randomized
I got an email this week from Citi Bank telling me that I may have some problems with my statement transactions. They encouraged me to sign on – which didn’t work. I called Citi Bank today and five different people over the course of one hour and a plethora of inaccurate referrals told me that there is no record of my account with Citi bank and that they can’t tell me anything about the email because I don’t show an active account. I use my card all the time, I pay my bill monthly on time and each person was absolutely uninterested in whether I found help. Any suggestions?
Cheryl,
That is horrible! Ok, here is what I would do…
First go to Best Buy or Office Depot or somewhere and pick up a digital audio recorder. Personally I recommend the Olympus WS100.
Next give them a call back from a speaker phone and make sure and record the whole conversation. The first thing you should do when you call in is ask to speak to a supervisor. When they try to prevent you just tell them very politely that you’ve already spoken to 5 people who were unable to help and you don’t want to continue telling the story.
Make sure that you have each person say their name to you so that you have it on tape.
When you get a supervisor, go ahead and relate the entire story to them again. Hopefully they will be willing to take some ownership and get you taken care of, but if not at least you’ve got the discussion recorded now.
If you are still not getting satisfaction I would recommend that you call the Citibank number here, skipping all the menus and begin asking for the VP of customer service. It is going to be a battle of wills, but you need to continue being polite yet firm and keep recording every conversation and making notes of each persons name you speak with.
At some point you are either going to get the issue resolved, or you are going to have some incredible recordings to share with the newspaper or some blogger demonstrating how ridiculous the situation is.
If you end up with something really bad recorded you can report it to The Consumerist, or shoot me an e-mail and I’ll post it for you. Just make sure that you edit your sensitive details out of the audio before you give it to anyone. You can do that with one of the free audio editing programs here. My favorite is MP3DirectCut.
Good luck!
John
I’ll do it – in fact I’ve already got a handheld recorder so I’m set. I’ll keep you posted. Thanks!
The Citibank Virtual Account Numbers are the greatest invention since Al Gore invented the Internet. Seriously, my previous credit cards had been stolen TWICE, and I never shopped but with reputable online stores, restaurants, etc. Turns out, folks — and listen carefully — the company who divulged my CC numbers to thieves was none other than AT&T. That’s right! Remember the news story? They lost hundreds of thousands of them to a hacker. So don’t think your number is safe, or that you’re “covered” when it the number gets stolen by the credit card company zero-liability policy… they run you through a virtual lie detection system and make you do backflips before you get them to believe that you didn’t actually authorize that $5000 charge in London through Western Union (a popular conduit for credit card thieves). You will cry real tears of frustration before the problem goes away. PREVENT IT! Get a Citibank card and use Virtual Account Numbers, I use it CONSTANTLY. You can limit the amount of the purchase, it can only be used by THAT merchant, and it vanishes forever afterward. Magic. Pure magic.
Oh, and yes now I use a Virtual Account Number when I pay AT&T online, for both my home phone / DSL as well as my iPhone. No one has EVER seen my real credit card number on my Citibank card. And they never will.
That sound pretty cool, my bank has called me a couple of times when I do late night shopping sprees online asking if that was really me buying a lot of stuff at 3am…
Tonight it was 5000 Copyscape credits, subscription to Wordtracker and 2 round trip plane tickets within 30 minutes… That is almost certain to get a call form the bank…
Kim:)
I used to use this feature from American Express till a few years ago when they switched this feature off – and I HATED Amex for that !
Literally the very next year, my Amex credit card got hacked and I got several weird charges on my account that totalled almost $10K ! The good thing with Amex though, is they reached me on my cell phone, asked me about the charges and denied them !
What I’d love to hear about is which specific credit card I should get from Citibank for this feature. I am really looking forward to getting a Visa credit card with this feature but the only Visa card I can see being offered by Citibank is the Hilton Visa card :(
its nice, but can softw give any type of credit card no.!!
Busn Checking account number:
routing: 271972899
Checking: 7117000865
That is a pretty awesome feature. I’m not much of a Citibank fan, but this is definitely a move into the right direction.
Is the Citibank VAN feature available worldwide or just in the US? We have CITIBANK here in Philippines but when i called up and inquired about this, they do not have any idea what a virtual account number is!
Is Citibank the only bank that offers virtual account numbers. I love this system. I keep a Citibank card, with a low credit limit, specifically to order online. It’s the only card I use and I use a virtual number each time.
In the past I have use my other credit cards, and three times my card have been lifted. Never again. I’ve gone back to shopping locally and very minimal internet shopping. If websites can’t protect us then they don’t deserve our loyalty.