When I first created this thread I didn't think I'd read or see so many people replying to it. I'm glad my rant got some attention from fellow paypal users likely searching for answers like I was to Paypal gettin' rid of such a cool product 😜
It's really a shame that Paypal took it down, I meant to reply here and tell everyone what Paypal had told me when I phoned into them awhile ago...I had to wait hours on the phone for answers from various managers (because I had setup my business to rely on this feature, I was furious) and to be honest I can't even remember everything that they had told me at the time...however I was told the following about the main point of them removing the secure card generator from new customers::
** The secure card generator had issues that the Paypal developers could not fix easily or fast enough, which was that the secure card generator was STILL allowing SOME of these "one-time use cards" to be charged again and again even though it was obviously supposed to be authenticated once, and then no longer available to be charged. This didn't happen ALL the time but to some generated "virtual" credit cards, it did happen... The bigger problems that this caused for Paypal is that the customers (you and me) would be outraged that their cards (your Paypal account) were being charged a SECOND time when you didnt expect it; and in turn these same people who's "secure" generated cards were allowing multiple transactions over the course of many months, turned around and started filing for unauthorized transactions/refunds... Visa and Discover, Mastercard, etc are all setup to handle claims for unauthorized transactions but not so much Paypal directly due to this being a unique product (infinite unique credit cards =p), since they were the ones promising their customers that these cards could only be used once or in whatever manner the card was specificed to be generated in; and paypal had to refund money to many of its customers for this flaw, while it lost money that was actually charged on the credit cards to the business that charged them. When I say paypal lost the money it was because a lot of these customers thought it'd be a great idea to "try out" services on the web that required a credit card (or use their virtual card on a site they may not trust but still want to buy from), and if they didn't cancel their service within 30 days, their card would go into SUBSCRIPTION mode whereby every month they would get billed for the monthly fee. Customers thought by using these virtual cards that they wouldnt get repeatedly charged and wouldnt have to remember to cancel their subscription, but this wasnt the case obviously as like I just said, a percentage of virtual credit card users where STILL getting charged repeatedly, and technically it was Paypals fault, but at the same time the subscription service that was charging the virtual credit cards repeatedly were NOT illegally charging the cards because in most cases the customer didn't cancel their subscription (even though the card was supposed to decline). So this was risky for Paypal to continue offering this feature to new customers, because they dont need more and more people to keep running into problems like this until it gets fixed. *I* think tts also shady they havent warned the CURRENT customers like myself who can use it, that this possible flaw can happen with the virtual credit card generator...
There were also a few other reasons for them getting rid of this feature, however I can't remember, the main reason was my aforementioned ramble. I THINK another reason was that some card numbers weren't 100% unique and the credit card numbers were being generated twice (by two different Paypal customers!) and there were conflicts in billing due to this.
They DID hint that a newer version of this product "virtual credit cards" may be released in the future (no date/time given). They also mentioned that the CURRENT paypal secure credit card plugin feature may stop functioning completely at some point in the future without notice to those of us who can still use it, if Paypal they cannot complete the needed fixes.
dragonsbait, I just read your response to this and I dont see the secure credit card plugin for download available on your site? When I try to register it said I need to pay for a subscription I think? Please advise.
I dont have a lot of time these days but if anyone wants this program still, post back and if theres enough people I can put it up on rapidshare or something...cant gaurentee brand new paypal users can use this though...I know that customers before a certain date (probably right before my first post on this thread) should be able to use it though.
Thanks everyone for getting involved on this topic, I hope Paypal comes back with an improved (working) virtual credit car generator. Hopefully they wont delete my post here 😜
