NatWest Group Virtual Debit Cards

confederated

I bank with the Royal Bank of Scotland (Child & Co) and they have recently enabled virtual debit cards. Apart from using it on sites with a low trust level I'm struggling to think of how I might use a virtual card. You can only have two. I completely understood the old Cahoot virtual cards where you could generate a card number for a specific transaction with a pre-set payment limit. That feature I used a lot. Sadly there is nothing similar today.

Anyone have any ideas of usage scenarios?

sausage_time

Wise support Digital Cards which can be changed up to 3 times a day.  I could never see the point myself.

WillPS

confederated said:

I bank with the Royal Bank of Scotland (Child & Co) and they have recently enabled virtual debit cards. Apart from using it on sites with a low trust level I'm struggling to think of how I might use a virtual card. You can only have two. I completely understood the old Cahoot virtual cards where you could generate a card number for a specific transaction with a pre-set payment limit. That feature I used a lot. Sadly there is nothing similar today.

Anyone have any ideas of usage scenarios?

Some restaurants require a card number to make a booking.

I'm not in the habit of not showing up but I have in the past been 'accidentally' charged the no-show fee even though I had; so I generally give these a disposable Revolut number now (which gets immediately binned so it can never be charged).

Silverstone11

confederated said:

I bank with the Royal Bank of Scotland (Child & Co) and they have recently enabled virtual debit cards. Apart from using it on sites with a low trust level I'm struggling to think of how I might use a virtual card. You can only have two. I completely understood the old Cahoot virtual cards where you could generate a card number for a specific transaction with a pre-set payment limit. That feature I used a lot. Sadly there is nothing similar today.

Anyone have any ideas of usage scenarios?

I might use mine for telephone orders, as I’m not usually keen to telling someone my real details over the phone. 

I’m not sure exactly how they work with RBS, but with Starling you can get spending insights by card (well by space and the card is attached to the a space). So you could then see how much you spent on personal vs household spend or personal vs work expenses maybe. 

I believe you can also set different spend controls on a virtual card, so you could block certain types of payment or set a lower limit for sending - the most obvious thing here might be to set a low spending limit on your physical card in case you lose it.

jim1999

I use the Revolut ones for online services I don't trust all that much.  Occasionally I buy software, small electricals etc from small vendors where I a) don't trust them that much to protect my personal data and b) don't trust them that much not to try to extract more money from me later on.

If I've got a virtual / disposable card with a small amount of credit on it, the amount of damage that can do is extremely limited.

Of course, I could just not use sites like that, but often it's because they've got a good deal or seem to provide something fairly unique - and a disposable card bridges the gap quite neatly.

GTR_King

I got IOS update for my NatWest app & virtual debit cards were available to create so I did! 

Anyone else tried it?

GalacticaActual

GTR_King said:

I got IOS update for my NatWest app & virtual debit cards were available to create so I did! 

Anyone else tried it?

Yes, I tried it out yesterday and the virtual card is now ready to use this morning.

It will be handy to add the virtual card to my Amazon account and other online shopping sites, if needed.

There is also an option to add it to Apple Wallet and Click to Pay.

wiseonesomeofthetime

Now showing in my Android app

d6fs1l

I hadn't seen any announcement of this but it is now offered in the iOS app.

Nice enhancement -- and I think maybe the first of the 'traditional' banks to introduce this for current accounts?

jackjones01

GalacticaActual said:

GTR_King said:

I got IOS update for my NatWest app & virtual debit cards were available to create so I did! 

Anyone else tried it?

Yes, I tried it out yesterday and the virtual card is now ready to use this morning.

It will be handy to add the virtual card to my Amazon account and other online shopping sites, if needed.

There is also an option to add it to Apple Wallet and Click to Pay.

The design of the virtual card is a lot better than there actual cards. 

GalacticaActual

jackjones01 said:

GalacticaActual said:

GTR_King said:

I got IOS update for my NatWest app & virtual debit cards were available to create so I did! 

Anyone else tried it?

The design of the virtual card is a lot better than there actual cards. 

Yes, I thought the virtual card was a much better design too.