The big news today is that PayPal will begin offering new software tomorrow which will allow PayPal members to generate a one-time credit card number for online purchases, according to Reuters. Customers will download the software, called the PayPal Secure Card, and when they land on the billing page of ANY eCommerce site which accepts MasterCard, it will allow them to generate a credit card number to make the purchase.

A few points on this:

• The software was made in conjunction with MasterCard, so if your site accepts MasterCard it will accept this new one-time card number. I assume that the billing address will need to be the address tied to the PayPal account, but I am curious how this and the CVV number will work.
• Reuters claims “It answers an innovation by Google Inc, which a year ago introduced Google Checkout…”, but I disagree. Google Checkout was an answer to PayPal integrations on-site, but this is a definite step ahead of Google, as it allows ANY eCommerce site which accepts MasterCard (and who doesn’t?) to let PayPal customers make a transaction.
• The article also states that “Secure Cards is the latest measure from eBay to curtail “phishing’”, and I just don’t see the connection. Can anyone help me out in the comments, because Reuters just starts listing out statistics on phishing and doesn’t explain this bit of PR at all.
• The whole software package is a plug-in, only available to PC users on Firefox and IE at the outset. The Reuters article claims that “Users of Apple’s Safari browser have only partial access to the service for now.” I don’t understand what partial access would mean, you get the first 8 digits of the card maybe, but I am curious to find out tomorrow.
• Commenters on TechCrunch point out that this is not an entirely new idea, Discover and Citi have long offered one-time virtual cards, but I think the fact that this ties to a PayPal account, and the added ease of the plug-in, will make the pick-up of Secure Card fairly high.

What do you think of this new software?