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PayPal's Secure Card Plug-in Adds Virtual MC Cards

Digital Money World
November 2007

PayPal, in their "not so evil" attempt to rule the world's payment systems, is now offering a super charged new virtual card product for its users. The new service is no doubt in response to the growing popularity of Google Checkout and contains some similar features.In partnership with MasterCard, they are launching this virtual card payment solution so account holders can spend money and shop at web sites that don't currently accept PayPal. According to other press reports, PayPal's new Secure Card plug-in was offered for testing to three million customers and is available to US consumers from this day forward.

The technology is from Orbiscom and here is how it works. Shop the Internet, land on a shopping cart check out page and your Secure Card browser plug-in will automatically fill in the form with your stored personal data. Then the PayPal system will generate just for you a unique Mastercard virtual card for that payment specific payment amount. This is a one time use card transaction and comes complete with the card verification code and directly debited from your PayPal account.

What is the cool part of this transaction? For the merchant receiving your payment, the entire check out looks and feels exactly like a standard card payment. The transaction infomation does not specify, "this is a PayPal virtual card transaction" . The whole check out looks just like another MasterCard payment and the merchant is no wiser. To further simplify things, the payment shows up in the PayPal shopper's account just like another payment. This new feature is so simple and so convenient how could anyone ever shop online and NOT use their PayPal account, its magnificent.

Plug-In works like a signature debit card, with funds drawn from users' PayPal accounts and then paid within a few days into merchant accounts through the MasterCard backbone network, with processing provided by First Data Corp. "The biggest thing is [account holders] can still use their PayPal accounts to pay and check out," says a PayPal spokesperson. If the user's prepaid account holds insufficient funds, the product defaults to the user's checking account.

Another brilliant product from PayPal.