Google has announced an expansion of its virtual cards in Google Pay, promising to make online purchases even more secure. In the coming months, users will be able to use virtual cards for their purchases on Android and desktop devices using Google's Autofill, whether they have a Visa, American Express, MasterCard, or Capital One card.

Virtual cards in Google Pay provide an additional layer of security when shopping online by replacing the 16-digit credit card number, as well as the three-digit CVV/CVC code, with a unique number, keeping your real card number private. When you make a purchase from a merchant for the first time, Google will ask you if you want to create a virtual card for that purchase so as to keep your information safe, and from there, your information is filled in automatically with Google's Autofill.

Virtual cards aren't completely new, but until now, only Capital One bank cards supported them, and you'd have to create your virtual card beforehand in order to use it. With this new implementation, it looks like it'll be easier to get started with virtual cards. Support for Visa and American Express cards is planned for this summer, and MasterCard will be supported "before the start of the holiday shopping season", according to Google.

Using a virtual card on Chrome for desktop and Android

Unfortunately, if you're hoping to see the feature outside of the United States, Google didn't mention anything about it being available in other countries. Virtual cards will initially be available in Google Chrome on Android and desktop devices, as well as throughout the ecosystem of Android apps, so you can benefit from the added security almost anywhere. Google says it will also bring the experience to more places later, but the company didn't say where that might be.

To go along with this expansion, Google is also making it easier to manage your virtual cards via the Google Pay website. This page will allow you to see all your virtual cards, enable the virtual cards feature for cards you've added to your account, and see your past transactions with those virtual cards.

On the developer side, Google says no changes will be required in order to support Google Pay virtual cards, as long as their forms are already setup to use Google's Autofill. If it isn't, this is a good time to optimize forms in order to prepare for this feature.

At this year's Google I/O, the company also announced a new Wallet app, which merges Google Pay and digital IDs, so you can find it all in one place. This unified experience will be coming to a wide range of markets, but the United States and India are exceptions.

Source: Google Developers (YouTube)