Citibank has trotted out its own version of an online-shopping security service that has been in the market for nearly two years without making much of a splash.
The software of its "virtual account numbers" service generates fake one-time-use credit card numbers for buying online or by phone. The issuing bank matches the fake numbers to real ones, offering protection from hackers.
"Consumers' No. 1 fear about shopping on the Web … is that personal account numbers will be stolen," said Amy Radin, the director of the CitiCards e-business group.
Citibank is using software from Orbiscom Inc. of Dublin, as have MBNA Corp. and Morgan Stanley's Discover Financial Services for similar services introduced in September 2000.
The only other U.S. issuer to offer such a service is American Express Co. Amex at first offered it for all cards but canceled that version, saying it did not get enough use. The company now provides one-time numbers only to holders of its Blue card, who can use the service only by running their cards through a card reader.
One analyst estimated that only a few percent of Blue, Discover, and MBNA card customers regularly use such numbers online.
Citibank's seven million online accounts have been able to download the small software program needed to generate the one-time-use account numbers for the past six weeks or so, Ms. Radin said.
She has already seen upticks in transaction size for those who used service, and Citibank's online sales are growing faster than the market, Ms. Radin said.
