Visa Cards for mail, telephone and Internet use only

Cards for mail, telephone and Internet use only

Special pre-paid Visa cards for Mail Order/Telephone Order (MOTO) and Internet use only are made available by a small number of banks. They are sometimes called "virtual Visa cards", although they usually do exist in the form of plastic. An example is 3V. Recently, these virtual cards have been increasingly issued by non-financial institutions such as grocery and convenience stores to consumers as a replacement for money orders (such as PaidByCash in the United States). Such cards can be used whenever the remote store accepts Visa cards. Before making the transaction, the customer transfers the required amount of money from his main account to the card's sub-account using the bank's website or the telephone. Next, the customer gives the card number and the CVV2 code to the merchant, who authorizes the transaction electronically, as with a regular Visa card. If there is enough money on the sub-account, the bank grants the authorization and locks the adequate amount on the sub-account.

Such a card prevents fraud by a card number thief even if the card is not blocked, because the customer normally does not store any money on the sub-account and fraudulent transactions do not get authorized by the bank. For extra security, the CVV2 code is not printed on the card but rather sent separately to the customer in a secured envelope.

The bank also rejects local transactions, that is ones that are not made over the Internet, mail or telephone. However, some merchants use software incompatible with Visa regulations and send authorization requests that wrongly tell the bank that the transaction is not a MOTO/Internet one, in which case the bank rejects the request. Additionally, some merchants do not use electronic authorization at all, in which case the transaction cannot be completed as well. For these two reasons the card is unusable with a small minority of Internet, telephone and postal stores.