Virtual Account Numbers

I was catching up on One Money Dummy’s blog the other day when I noticed her refer to using a virtual account number to make a transaction. I’d never heard of that, so looked it up. According to this article on bankrate.com, companies like Citibank and Discover allow customers to create virtual credit card numbers to use for online transactions in place of their real credit card numbers. The idea is to improve security for online transactions since you won’t ever have to give out your real credit card number. The only drawback is that you can’t use it for things like tickets that you pick up at will-call where you have to show your card to confirm. (Because of course, it won’t match.) I have no idea how long this has been available, but it seems like an interesting idea.