There are so many on-line shopping opportunities and special on-line only deals these days it can be almost impossible to pass them up. Many people are still a little hesitant to use their credit cards to pay for purchases online because they are concerned about the safety of their financial information, even on a secure site. For those who hold Visa credit cards the Verified by Visa Service offers an extra layer of online security to help cardholders feel a little more confident about using their credit cards to pay for online purchases.
What Is Verified by Visa?
Verified by Visa is an optional, free service offered to Visa card holders by VISA in partnership with the INTRUST bank. This simple system allows you to assign a password to your VISA card account which must be entered at participating merchant sites before a credit card transaction can successfully proceed. This means that if your credit card information has been stolen no one can run up an Internet shopping bill in your name. It also means that no one in your household could use your credit card online without your permission (think tweens and teens).
Which Visa Cards Offer Verified by Visa?
As it is an optional service the Verified by Visa protection can be added to any Visa credit or debit card, even if you have had it for a while. If your card provider does not offer the service at the time your card is first issued you can always add the Verified by Visa service to your card at anytime by visiting the official VISA worldwide site.
How Does Verified by Visa Change the Way You Shop Online?
The verified by Visa is not offered at every e commerce website you might visit but a growing number of online merchants are opting into the service to encourage customer confidence in the idea of using their VISA card to purchase goods and services on-line. Some people wonder exactly how activating the Verified by Visa service on their credit or debit cards will change the way they shop online. Basically it adds one simple extra step to the checkout process on a participating site. After entering your VISA card number in the usual manner a new window will appear and you will be prompted to enter the Verified by Visa password you have chosen as well as , in some cases, an additional identifying question that will help verify that an authorized person is using the card. Once this process is successfully completed you will be returned to the checkout and can proceed to complete your purchase in the normal manner.
Criticisms of the Verified by Visa Service
Although a great many credit card users like the extra protection that Verified by Visa offers it is not a popular service with everybody. Some on-line merchants claim that it has increased the number of abandoned shopping carts and incomplete transactions at their sites, while some consumers find the process too time consuming and a little confusing. Some big retailers, including Amazon.com still refuse to add the service for just these reasons. On the other hand other e-tailers have decided to embrace the service and integrate the Verified by Visa service into their main checkout, rather than having their customers directed to a separate page thus potentially confusing them.
Other Verified by Visa FAQs Answered
Many credit card holders do share their VISA cards with their spouse and significant other and wonder if they can have separate Verified by Visa passwords to make things easier for each of them as individuals (a password that is easy for one person to remember may be harder for another after all). At the time of writing however that is not a possibility, each VISA that has the Verified by Visa service attached to it can only have one unique password.
Another commonly asked question is whether or not the Verified by Visa service can be removed from a credit card after it has been activated. The answer to this question is yes, and the process is actually very easy. All you have to do is log into the Verified by Visa site and locate the “De-activate” option. Once you have confirmed by email that you did intend to take this action the service will no longer be attached to your VISA credit or debit card.