What are virtual debit cards and should you use one?
Virtual debit cards can help to combat online card fraud, yet only a handful of banks currently offer them. So, what exactly are they, and should you be using one?
Fraudsters using stolen card details for online and phone shopping – known as remote purchase or card-not-present (CNP) fraud – remains one of the payments industry’s greatest security challenges.
One way to reduce this risk is to stop our card details falling into the wrong hands. That’s where virtual cards come in, though adoption across the banking industry has been slow.
What are virtual debit cards?
Virtual debit cards are digital cards with their own unique card number, CVV and expiry date.
They don’t arrive in the post so they can’t be stolen in transit – a type of fraud that cost the industry £2.9m in 2024. And when you shop with one online, you don’t share your actual card details with the retailer, so you’re better protected against fraud and data breaches.
This makes them ideal for unfamiliar (and therefore risky) websites, as well as free and introductory trials (where you might forget to cancel) because you can freeze or delete virtual cards without affecting your physical one.
While they come into their own for online shopping, you can also use them to make contactless payments in person using Apple Pay or Google Pay, though not for payments that need a physical card present, such as hotel bookings and train tickets.
- Find out more: bank fraud tactics explained
Which UK banks offer virtual debit cards?
Revolut started offering virtual cards in 2018, yet Monzo, NatWest Group and Starling are the only banks to follow suit so far.
Irish bank An Post Money (the financial arm of the Republic of Ireland’s postal services) offers something similar, having partnered with a company called SafeCypher to offer its customers dynamic CVV codes that change every time they make an online purchase.
The bank recently told Which? that this is still helping to reduce card fraud, bucking industry trends, resulting in a 40% reduction in total card fraud losses in 2025 compared to 2024, almost all of which is card-not-present.
Chase UK takes a different approach, by having different debit card details for its physical card compared to the card used for online purchases. Both are linked to the same account, but have their own set of details and can be individually frozen or replaced without affecting the other. Physical Chase cards are numberless – to protect them from thieves – where the 16 digit number is generated in its banking app instead.
- Find out more: 10 tips for safer online and mobile banking
Are virtual debit cards safer?
Arguably, virtual cards target problems that have already been solved by Apple Pay and Google Pay. This perhaps explains why adoption has been fairly slow.
When you store your debit and credit cards within an Apple or Google wallet, you don’t share your real card details when you pay in-store, online or through an app. You also don’t need to store your card details with retailers for convenience, which would otherwise be at risk of data breaches.
However, not all retailers accept Apple and Google Pay, meaning you would otherwise have to expose your real card number to that business. Virtual cards also go further than digital wallets, allowing you to isolate risky transactions such as subscriptions and instantly delete compromised virtual cards without disrupting your main account.
They can also help with budgeting, as some banks let you create separate virtual cards for bills, subscriptions and spending categories.
- Find out more: contactless payments explained
How to use a virtual debit card
To create a virtual debit card, you will need to log into your bank’s mobile app. At NatWest for instance, you select ‘Manage cards & Apple Wallet’ or ‘Manage cards & Google Wallet’ from your current account.
You won’t be charged to use one, though Monzo only offers virtual cards to customers paying a monthly fee for its Monzo Plus, Premium, Extra, Perks or Max accounts.
Revolut offers disposable virtual cards, which means the card disappears from your app once you’ve paid and gets replaced with a new disposable card. These are ideal for one-off purchases from online stores you don’t yet trust. It also offers multi-use virtual cards for things like subscriptions. You can set daily, weekly, or monthly spending caps on individual virtual cards in your Revolut app.
Starling’s virtual cards are used in conjunction with its savings pots called ‘Spaces’. When you use a virtual card linked to an individual Space, the money is taken from that pot rather than your main balance. If that Space has no funds, the card will be declined. You can then track virtual card transactions by tapping the Space it’s connected to, making it easier to monitor risky purchases and stick to a budget.
Monzo and NatWest also promote their virtual debit cards as personalised budgeting and payment tools, labelled to suit your spending habits, such as bills, subscriptions, transport and groceries. As with Starling, you can set spending limits on Monzo virtual cards by linking them directly to a specific Pot. This means only the funds available within that Pot can be spent.
Can scammers use virtual debit cards?
Fraud tactics are constantly evolving and we’re already aware that bank impersonation scammers are telling people to create virtual cards on the pretence that this will help them ‘secure’ their accounts.
In one particularly nasty case reported to us recently, criminals used number spoofing to mimic the genuine caller ID of his high-street bank and targeted their victim at the end of a busy working day. They spun an elaborate story, pretending his phone had been hacked and his bank accounts were at risk. They convinced him to create various virtual ‘dummy cards’, supposedly to protect his money.
To appear credible, they recited the first six digits of the first virtual card number and its expiry date, before asking him to share the remaining numbers and the CVV. Armed with these virtual card details, the criminals spent over £30,000, simultaneously tricking him into approving the transactions through his banking app.
Remember that no legitimate bank will ever ask you to move money to a ‘safe account’ or create a virtual card to protect it. Anyone who asks you to do this is a scammer so end the call immediately and report the fraud attempt to your bank using a trusted number.
Can you get refunds on virtual debit card payments?
Your virtual card payments will show as normal in your statements and you can dispute transactions just as you would a physical debit card transaction.
Report any transactions you don’t recognise as unauthorised and if you have a dispute with a retailer (such as faulty goods, or goods that don’t arrive) which refuses to refund you, chargeback still applies to virtual card payments.
Virtual cards also shouldn’t affect things like cashback or rewards linked to your spending as the money is still tied to your main current account.
- Find out more: the card protection banks don’t tell you about
Virtual card limit and restrictions
There are usually restrictions on the number of virtual cards you can create, how much you can spend and where you can use them. NatWest lets you have two virtual debit cards at any one time and a maximum of 25 per year, for example. It also applies a spending limit of £5,000 per card, per day.
Across the board, virtual cards cannot be used for cash withdrawals, gambling purchases, cryptocurrency exchanges, or money transfers (such as Western Union).
| Bank | Active cards allowed | Spending limit per card |
|---|---|---|
| Monzo [a] | 5 | n/a |
| NatWest Group [b] | 2 | £5,000 per day |
| Revolut disposable [c] | 1 | Max 5 transactions |
| Revolut multi-use [c] | 20 | n/a |
| Starling | 5 | £500 and max 50 transactions per day |
Table notes: [a] Monzo lets you create nine virtual cards every 30 days, max 100 per year and while there is no daily spending limit beyond its overall limit of £10,000 for all card payments, you can create your own by linking a virtual card to a Pot [b] NatWest restricts users to 25 virtual cards per year. [c] Revolut lets you create four multi-use cards every 30 days (up to max 20) and you only need one disposable card linked to your account as it refreshes after every purchase.
