So I need a SME Spring & Plunger for a tone arm and managed to get hold of SME UK directly who appear to be more than happy to transact with individuals, providing you are willing to email or fax your credit card details to them. Unfortunately sending my CC details around in clear text isn't going to happen. Nor do I trust fax (besides the obvious inconvenience).
So I recall seeing something about vcpay a while ago and decided to give them a go. Essentially they generate a single use CC with a preloaded amount on your mobile phone. You can EFT money into it or link it to your existing credit card. This is the perfect solution for insecure once-off transactions.
Installation is simple enough. You browse to their site on your phone, install the app, follow the setup steps, done. You then specify the amount and generate a card. You can email the card image to SME. I did find that the default embedded image iOS generates wasn't readable by whatever email client SME is using, so I forwarded to myself, saved the attachment as .jpg and sent it to SME.
One minus I did experience is that for some reason the transaction failed the first time (I received an SMS from vcpay indicating this). Possibly finger trouble? I tried to call vcpay call centre and gave up after 12min of hold music. So excellent idea, let down by useless support. The website also could have a bit more detail IMO. Fortunately I had SME retry and the transaction went through the second time. To compensate for exchange rate I padded the amount I loaded on the card. You only however pay the actual transaction cost + R2.95 vcpay transaction fee.
So all in all I'm happy. CC details are safe and was a worthwhile experiment which I would use again. Just hoping I never actually need to call vcpay :whip:
Site: https://www.vcpay.co.za/
So I recall seeing something about vcpay a while ago and decided to give them a go. Essentially they generate a single use CC with a preloaded amount on your mobile phone. You can EFT money into it or link it to your existing credit card. This is the perfect solution for insecure once-off transactions.
Installation is simple enough. You browse to their site on your phone, install the app, follow the setup steps, done. You then specify the amount and generate a card. You can email the card image to SME. I did find that the default embedded image iOS generates wasn't readable by whatever email client SME is using, so I forwarded to myself, saved the attachment as .jpg and sent it to SME.
One minus I did experience is that for some reason the transaction failed the first time (I received an SMS from vcpay indicating this). Possibly finger trouble? I tried to call vcpay call centre and gave up after 12min of hold music. So excellent idea, let down by useless support. The website also could have a bit more detail IMO. Fortunately I had SME retry and the transaction went through the second time. To compensate for exchange rate I padded the amount I loaded on the card. You only however pay the actual transaction cost + R2.95 vcpay transaction fee.
So all in all I'm happy. CC details are safe and was a worthwhile experiment which I would use again. Just hoping I never actually need to call vcpay :whip:
Site: https://www.vcpay.co.za/
