Virtual cards
A card number for the sites that only take cards, issued against your own balance, with the card details never stored by BitriPay in a form that could be taken from it.
Anyone buying online who has a wallet but no bank card: freelancers paying for software, students paying fees, traders buying stock from foreign sites.
Built, tested and switched off. It is a function of an issuer or an acquirer, so it stays off until the corresponding authorisation is recorded, or until an authorised institution operates it on the platform. Nothing here is offered to a customer meanwhile. This service will be available after the authorisation of the Banque Centrale du Congo; it is switched off by the administrator
The problem
Mobile money is how people here pay each other, and it is not how the internet takes payment. A great many online services simply cannot be bought without a card number, whatever else you hold.
How it works
- Create a card against your balance and set a limit for it.
- Use it where a card number is required.
- Each payment is authorised against the balance behind it, so it cannot spend money you do not have.
- Freeze or destroy the card at any moment; the balance stays with you.
What you can check
Facts about the running platform rather than adjectives. Each one is visible in the product, the API reference or the ledger.
- Card details are handled so that BitriPay does not retain the sensitive values in a form that could be taken from it.
- A card is backed by your balance, so a card payment cannot exceed what is actually there.
- A card can be frozen or destroyed instantly, and destroying it does not touch the money behind it.
- A separate card per subscription confines a leak or a rogue merchant to that one card.
What it costs
Card issuance and usage are priced in the dashboard before you create one, including any foreign-currency charge, so the cost of a purchase is known before it is made.
Questions
Why would I use several cards?
One per subscription confines any problem to one card. A leak, a merchant that will not let you cancel, a price rise you did not agree to — destroy that card and the problem ends, without touching anything else you pay for.
Can it go overdrawn?
No. Each payment is authorised against the balance behind the card, so it cannot spend money that is not there. The failure mode is a declined card, not a debt.
I lost my phone.
Freeze the card from any other device you can sign in on. A virtual card has no plastic to lose, which is most of its security advantage over the alternative.
Read next
Wallets and transfers
A transfer between two accounts is one balanced posting on a double-entry ledger, not a message between two systems that might later disagree.
Restricted wallets
Money that can only be spent on what it was given for, enforced at the posting rather than trusted to the recipient — so a school allowance buys school things.
Adding money
Funding that is confirmed by evidence from the operator or the bank, not by the customer saying they paid — so a balance never appears that no money backs.