My shady online credit card life

Sidin Vadukut — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 21:11:00 GMT

How many times have you seen that perfect gift on Ebay or Amazaon but decided to skip the purchase just because of credit card safety concerns? Or ached to subscribe to the New Yorker or the wonderful BBC History Magazine only to cower with fear when the online payment portal pops open?

Well maybe my little secret will perk you up and help you take just the right amount of risk.

For years I was armed with a pack of credit cards that as swiped online and off with gay abandon. I bought books, gadgets, movie tickets and a plethora of cables and convertors and perhaps even a moursepad or two. All without thinking twise about my online safety. God only knows how I never got fleeced by an unscrupulous online dealer or by one of those Russian credit card online fraud squads.

And then marriage happened. When I maxed out all my cards to the last final rupee on my credit limit and then spent months paying them all back. Slowly I gave up all my cards till, today, I am left with just one single salary account debit card that works on not one single online site, and not many more shops itself. (It is one of those hideous pin number enabled cards that shop keepers look on with great distaste.)

But that doesn't mean I don't buy USB memory sticks, phone scratch guards and... ahem... mouse pads off the web. I do. Mostly thanks to my banks netbanking service and also thanks to a handy service that so far I have only seen on HDFC Bank' website. Called NetSafe, the service is sheer genius. If you have an account with HDFC, you can quickly register and then create virtual credit cards with clearly defined credit limits, single use functionality and just 24-hour validity. Which means you create them only when you want to, they work exactly for that one transaction and become inactive afterwords. So even if someone latches on to the card they can do NOTHING with the info. I've been using this for at least two years with great satisfaction. Here's how:

When you land on the HDFC website look for the login box on the right:

See the NetSafe option? Click login, register and then connect your NetSafe account to an existing HDFC Bank account. Then you see a screen to create your card:

(What a laughable bank balance no? Authentic. No photoshopping of any kind.)

Depending on whether you have a Visa or MasterCard account you get to create your NetSafe card. Choose your credit limit, type of card and hit go. (Always choose a little more than you need. The unspent balance will automatically credit back into your account.)

And in moments you have your fully functional NetSafe card. As good as plastic!:

As you can see, you get all the details you need to make a regular online transaction.

From my experience it's everything you need to buy most things on websites foreign and domestic.

NetSafe is a simple, rather risk free of making online transactions. If you have an HDFC Bank account it makes perfect sense to try this out. (And yes it will keep track of all the cards you create and your spends and so on.)

Don't you just love it when technology works?

p.s. There is also a simple, but dated NetSafe application for Windows users that lets you do all this on the payment page of a website on the fly.

p.p.s. Does your non-HDFC Bank offer a similar service too? Tell us! We love such things here!

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My shady online credit card life