Thread: Can online transactions on a credit card be disabled ?

My understanding is that fraud happening for online transactions in case of credit card is more what it is for swipe transactions.

So if I am a person say who is apprehensive of such online fraud happening and I do not mind using my credit card only for swipe transactions, then is there a service provided usually by a credit card company to disable our online transactions ?

If yes, then if the cardholder then prefers to enable online transactions, can that also be possible ?

My looked into this for my grandmother years ago and it wasn't possible at the time to outright block online transactions. However some designator accounts can create sub accounts (for children, partners, employees) and I know those accounts and respective cards can be restricted to specific limits. Not sure on specific point of purchase (in person vs. online).

Probably the reason for not disabling online transactions may be that a significant portion of revenue would not be earned if that is done.

This is because there would be many customers who voluntarily do not want to do online transactions. But then because online transactions are not disabled, they do end up doing online transactions as well.

So if at all there was a service to disable online transactions, such customers would have chosen that service. That would have meant decrease in revenue for the credit card companies.

And probably this potential decrease in revenue is more than the loss caused by online fraud.

You might be asking the wrong question. You should not be asking to block "online" transactions. You would want to block "card not present" transactions. I believe you can do that in some cases. But merchants can still accept them if they pay higher fees.

Basically, if you are worried about fraud from online transactions then simply get a card from a company that will support you and be very proactive in reversing fraudulent charges.

Never heard of this as a feature but boy, that would be a great selling point for the AARP card don't you think?

Thanks for pointing about 'card not present' transactions.

Can anyone throw some light on salient features of an AARP card ?

Sorry but I am not very conversant with the card nomenclature in US.

And what could be a possible reason for 'disabling feature for online transactions' to be a good selling point for such AARP cards ?

Also, if hypothetically this feature is offered, then would the credit card companies really benefit by offering it ? Since elasticity of overall transactions ( for customers disabling this feature ) would come down.

May be they will have to charge a premium for offering this service. Hence, I doubt whether considerable customers ( customers whose majority transactions are swipe ) would be keen to opt for this feature. Especially, since they anyway do not have to pay for transactions which turn out to be fraud, for most of the times.

Probably, some more analysis would have to be done for this.

A simple way of accomplishing most of this is to use virtual CCs. I believe BofA and Citi offer these. I use Citi's extensively.
You create a seperate CC for each merchant you buy from. If a merchant abuses them you can cancel that "card" without affecting any other cards. You can also put a cumulative CL on each virtual CC number which I do for merchants I haven't done business with before. None of these impacts your use of the main physical card but makes it far less likely your main CC number will be compromised by an online company.

Thanks, this seems to be a very useful and robust service for security purpose.

But suppose that there is a merchant with whom the cardholder has not done a transaction before. And with that merchant, no virtual CC number has been set up. In such a case, if the real card related details are stolen, would it be possible to commit fraud to set up a virtual CC number with that merchant and carry out fraud transactions ?

May the answer to this has been provided above, but was a bit confused.

Though this virtual CC number would definitely reduce the chances of fraud, especially those where there is a chance for merchant conspiracy.

Also, are these virtual CC numbers in application only for online merchants or can they be used for swipe transactions ?