Today I learned that Robinhood Gold CC virtual card number allows you to “anonymize” your name. According to the FAQ under “What types of virtual cards are available?”, the name gets set to “J. Doe”. This is really cool and a first for a CC VAN AFAIK. The closest thing I can think of is privacy.com, which allows you to get virtual debit cards in any name, but it’s not free and doesn’t always work (lots of negative mentions on DoC).
I’m almost tempted to get RH Gold CC just for this. I never liked the idea of every third party seller on ebay, paypal, amazon, etc getting my complete billing info. Or even a first party seller I suppose .
I hope works without glitches and maybe starts a trend for other issuers. A while ago, it was somewhat rare for CC issuers to offer virtual CC numbers with spend limits and/or custom expiration date. Now virtually all major issuers do.
As far as the value of the benefit for me, I’m not sure it’s as vital as virtual CC numbers. At retailers like ebay or amazon, you need an account to order stuff so they already have to have a name. If you’re authorized to use that account, well you’re at least somewhat related to the account owner. Plus retailers that ship you goods already kinda know your billing info if it happens to be the same as your shipping info.
Anyway for my use case personally, since name on CC is 99% of the time the same as name on shipping address, it’s not gonna move the needle enough to “spend” a CC application on the RH Gold card (I value a CC application at $800+).
Uhm… Chase and BofA do not. I only know CapOne and Citi. Who else has virtual cards?
Having an account is one thing. But sending that account information to the seller is another. They should only share shipping info, but from past experience they share more than that. Paypal recipients get the billing info. Amazon sellers get (or at least used to) the buyer’s email address in addition to everything else, which seems entirely unnecessary since communications are supposed to occur on the amazon messaging platform.
That’s why I mentioned third party sellers separately – they do not need to know this, only the marketplace platform (i.e., amazon, ebay) needs to know this. And it doesn’t have to match, they used to check it against the credit card, which allowed a separate “shipping” address in the past. It wasn’t all issuers and I haven’t done this in a while so I don’t know the current state of affairs.
That’s not a concern. The point is that giving my name AND my address to every Jack and Jane makes it easier to get my identity stolen. If not by them then by whoever their customer database eventually leaks to. If all they have is a fake name, they can assume whatever they want about the relationship, they can’t steal my identity with that info.
Have you considered putting a credit card in a fake name? I don’t think anything stops you from doing this as an authorized user on your card, for example. I know someone who has a completely fake name as his name on a credit card. However, that seemed to happen many years ago due his using an alias at Amazon. Apparently, the Amazon card then assumed his name. Still under his SSN afaik.
If your friend was officially offered a second card under his own SSN and an assumed name, I suspect that assumed identity was merged into his own reports under his own SSN. Which means that this assumed identity could be stolen.
I suppose getting an AU under a pseudonym should work if the bank doesn’t require SSN or in-person visit, doesn’t raise a stink when they’re unable to report this info to a CRA (using name, address, and DoB, for example), and doesn’t somehow merge that name with your SSN.
Discover does. I still count them as separate from Cap1 since their cards are distinct.
I agree disclosing email isn’t necessary since communication can go through the platform. Billing info for third party sellers shouldn’t be required either (although I don’t know what’s needed for refunds) but I’m pretty sure shipping info at UPS, Fedex, or USPS needs a valid name in addition to the address. So if shipping info is different from billing info, that’d help. Otherwise not so much.
As in, they have to find out who lives at the address? If you rent and are not registered to vote at that address, that may make it more difficult but still for many people that’s not much of an obstacle. Every bit helps.
Even if the issuer did not check SSN before giving AU card or finds out when reporting errors come up, that’d be fraud on your part to intentionally provide false ID.
No they don’t. Are you talking about this? What they offer is payment tokenization, where you get a number usable with specific browsers or mobile wallets, same as when you add any card to Google Wallet or Apple Pay. It does not let you set spend limit or expiration date, or multiple numbers to be used with different merchants. If there really is something else, I haven’t seen it in 20+ years of having all of their accounts :.
No, it doesn’t. Long ago I changed my name in the eBay shipping address to a somewhat random value with numbers that doesn’t even look like a name. I changed it in Amazon to “a customer”. Never been an issue no matter who delivers, even when a signature is required. Business deliveries can use a business name on either from or to address, and it doesn’t have to be a “registered” business.
I didn’t make a huge distinction between using one of their Virtual Credit Card numbers with chrome browser and a truly portable independent virtual card number. Never used it but thought it was similar. Thanks for clarifying.
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