[sschueller]

What's absurd is that this is something I have to pay for or find a particular issuer of a visa/mastercard. It should be free and included with every visa and mastercard. They should demand that every issuer of their cards needs to offer virtual cards and 3d secure. If they don't then their fees should be significantly higher.

[lxgr]

Issuers effectively do need to offer 3D secure, since they are liable for all fraud that happens on 3DS-enabled transactions. It's just their choice on whether they choose to require authentication at all, some, or no transactions.

The US has more of a free market approach here, and experience has shown that the conversion rate hit is often much more severe than the reduction in fraud. Consumers will just use the most convenient card, and that turns out to be the one that just lets them buy (almost) everything without additional challenges.

The EU is taking the approach of forcing all issuers to challenge cardholders for most (higher value/risk) transactions. Given that the rules are the same for everyone, cardholders have nowhere to "escape" to – and issuers finally were forced to invest into making their implementations more usable.

[davchana]

Capital One offers it on their certain credit cards. Somehow Google Chrome, when you save Capital One card in it, offers to generate virtual directly from Chrome.

[NavinF]

How is that absurd? There is approximately zero consumer demand for stuff like this. Remember when chip cards were deployed 10 years ago and everyone was annoyed at how chip readers forced them to have the card out longer? Or how Amazon often doesn't check CVV numbers because doing do would increase attrition?

Of course a few of the largest banks find it worthwhile to add a page to their website where you can generate virtual card numbers, but it's not a huge win for them by any means even when they're liable for stolen cards.