Almost everyone understands the benefits of a single-use camera when on vacation- you have a camera that lets you capture the memories, but you arent stressed about ruining or losing the camera on adventurous trips. A single-use credit card is designed to help prevent identity theft, and they are typically referred to as virtual credit card numbers.
Virtual credit card numbers are used when shopping online, so that you never actually enter the number found on your credit card. How does this help? The virtual number can only be used at the web site where you make a purchase, and only for a limited amount of time. This protects you in the event that hackers have obtained your credit card details during the submission process, as they will not be able to use that number anywhere else in order to make a purchase. It also protects you when shopping with online merchants who may not be trust-worthy. The only merchants credit card processing system typically sends the details directly from your screen to the credit card processor- but in some cases, an untrustworthy merchant may have set it up to enable themselves to get a copy of each persons credit card details. A...