Virtual credit card
Virtual Credit Cards, an invention of the European banking industry aimed at those too stupid for pet rocks, are marketed primarily through the virtual marketplace known as the Intarweb.
Regular credit cards were enough of a scam; the bank sends clients plastic cards which likely only cost pennies for the bankers to stamp out and which aren't even real money. Once the unsuspecting client accepts the card, suddenly he starts getting bills from the bank every month for hundreds if not thousands of dollars. At that point it's too late, as the bank already has everyone's money.
That person laughing all the way to the bank? That'd be the bank manager. Ha, ha, yoke's on you...
Having gotten away with this, the next scam was the introduction of more new and unexplained service charges. Service? What service? Haven't seen any of that since the days of Robert Service and the Yukon gold rush. If you want to see a real human and not an automatic teller machine at a bank, good luck... banks do employ people, but they're all busy in the back rooms thinking up new service charges.
So, if the public is gullible enough to pay ever-increasing service charges for service that is non-existent, why not take this one step further... create a banking product that doesn't exist either.
And so the virtual card was born and launched online, on the pretext that even though it doesn't exist it could be used in e-commerce transactions where only a card number (and not the physical card itself) is required.
Virtually anything in stock?[edit]
It was a perfect fit; the merchandise is virtual (either a scam, or always out of stock, or so fragile and expensive to ship that the end user will never see any of it arrive at destination on time and in one piece). Fake money to buy fake merchandise; the banker is happy, the merchant is happy, what more could anyone want?
For those looking to get rid of the millions of unsolicited dollars that had been dumped on them by Nigerian Bank Spammers, it was perfect.
This banking initiative has virtually revolutionised e-commerce; gone are the old-fashioned nuts and bolts that cost so much to ship and in their place is an entire virtual product line, including:
- Imaginary power
- Virtual memory
- Tamagotchi
- Pet rocks
- Election promises
- Vapourware
- Yacht fuel
- Santa Claus
Of course these days, many scammers have moved on to Bitcoin to buy all the stuff on Dark Amazon. Banks haven't gone there because basically, it would make them super redundant.