A New Visa Tool Enables Transaction Limits for Credit, Debit, And Prepaid Cards

Visa Inc. has launched Visa Consumer Transaction Controls, a service that lets Visa-card issuing institutions offer cardholders the ability to set transaction limits with their credit, debit, and prepaid cards. Visa says it works with more than 14,000 financial institutions, but does not provide a U.S.-specific total.

Announced Tuesday, the service offers spending controls that can be applied to different transaction types, date ranges, or overall card spending. Consumers also can temporarily suspend their accounts in cases where they lose a card or have it stolen. Issuers choose which features to provide their cardholders.

Financial institutions use an application programming interface code to integrate the service into their systems. Visa says Consumer Transaction Controls can be used in a smart-phone app, mobile wallet, or Web site. Alerts can be sent by text, within an app, or by email. Consumers who receive transaction alerts experience 40% less fraud than cardholders who do not, according to Visa.

The API for Consumer Transaction Controls is available through Visa’s recently launched Visa Developer platform. Visa says multiple issuers are working with the API now and it anticipates tests later this year, a spokeswoman says. Visa says the tool was developed in-house and that it would not disclose pricing for the service.

Services like Consumer Transaction Controls are not new in the payment card market, but Visa is making its service available to a broad swath of issuers. Discover Financial Services offers a similar service, but only for its cards. The Shazam debit network added a transaction-control feature to its Bolts mobile app in 2015. Vendor Ondot Systems Inc. offers CardControl to issuers, too. Its service features the ability to switch acceptance on and off by merchant category.

Other providers include Fiserv Inc., a Brookfield, Wis.-based bank processor, with its CardValet tool, and Austin, Texas-based Malauzai Software Inc.

Transaction controls, especially for debit cards, may assuage consumer concerns about security and fraud. In a report about debit cards released earlier this year, Mercator Advisory Group Inc. found that 42% of all consumers were interested in such controls. Younger consumers—ages 18 to 34—were most interested, at 55%.