Chrome's Virtual Cards Keep Your Credit Card Details Safe While Shopping
Google Pay is introducing new ‘Virtual cards’ to Android and Chrome as a measure to help keep a user’s credit card details safe while shopping online. Although the internet has made shopping for products and services much easier, it has also opened up new ways for scammers to get access to a user’s private information. If it is financial information that's compromised, the effects can be devastating.
When using various Google products, including both Chrome and Android, Google already has ways to help keep a user’s details secure. One of the most commonly known and used is likely to be autofill. This is where a user clicks on a field for something like a credit card number and Google offers to add the number for the user, avoiding the need to manually type out the number. This not only makes it quicker to enter this information, but also adds an extra layer of protection.
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In the future, Google is now looking to improve on the use of autofill with Virtual cards. During this year's Google I/O event, Google explained that when someone uses autofill to add payment details, a virtual card will be used instead. This virtual card contains a virtual number which replaces the actual card number. As a result, the website or app that’s receiving the information won’t actually be receiving the real financial details while processing the payment.
The use of virtual cards will certainly make it safer when shopping online, but this appears to still be a work in progress. For example, not all cards will automatically be supported at launch, although most of the major ones will be in due course. Google has confirmed that Virtual card support will be available for
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