Six Reasons Not to Use Credit Cards for Online Shopping
Credit cards are widely used as an alternative form of money. It comes in use when you feel carrying money with you burdensome and messy. It also helps you to delay payment for a purchase you need urgently. In developing countries, like India, the use of this plastic money is picking up fast. Many banks in India like ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, SBI Bank provide credit card services to their customers.
Before the advent of online shopping, credit cards were relatively safe to use in any situation. In online shopping, we risk exposing our personal data and criminals are tapping into this vulnerability to rob us. Besides unscrupulous criminals, there are other reasons also, which makes using credit cards for online shopping risky.
Here are the top six reasons why you should avoid using credit cards for online shopping.
Reason#1 – Your Credit Card Details are not Safe – Shopping in an actual, physical market place allows you to keep a watchful eye over your card and your other personal information, and many purchases require either a signature or identity verification. Shopping online affords no such identity verification; anyone who has access to the information on your credit card can charge purchases to your account.
Another reason to avoid shopping online with your credit card is the online cashier’s ability to keep a record of your information. You have no reason to trust the operators of an online marketplace, and it is a very real possibility that they will save your credit card information and attempt to make purchases with it in the future.
Reason #2 – Identity Theft - Your credit card information is also a very strong form of personal identification, and having access to your credit card information could allow criminals to impersonate you and obtain loans in your name and absolutely ruin your creditworthiness. Further, identity theft is something that is notoriously difficult to prove, and it is very possible that you will never be fully acquitted of any malevolent actions an identity thief undertakes while impersonating you.
Reason#3 – Transaction Errors - We have all experienced computer errors, and online retail outlets are not immune to these common glitches. A simple error in the online data transfer can result in you being doubly charged for an item you purchase or result in the purchase never being made at all.
Reason #4 – Getting a Refund may be Troublesome - You have no way of ensuring that your purchase actually arrives at your home after you have made an online purchase. Fighting such claims can be very difficult once you have authorized an online retailer to charge your card as they have a plethora of excuses at their disposal, ranging from the postal carriers to shipping delays, or claiming that you entered the wrong address.
Using a guaranteed funding source, such as PayPal, will ensure that you get the items you purchased, and if you do not, you will have the organization’s guarantee to fall back on.
Reason #5 – Credit Card Transactions are Expensive – Unlike direct fund transfers, Credit Card transactions are relatively expensive. Because of this, online retailers tend to add an additional service charge when using credit cards. This can be extremely hard to fight because the retailers control the invoice records, price listings, etc.
In this case, it pays to have a guaranteed fund transfer service handle the transaction for you, as you can specify the exact amount you are transferring, and the transfer service will also maintain records for the transaction that will hold up in a legal battle.
Reason #6 – Leads to Increased Borrowing -Credit cards can also lead to burdensome debt. Their ease of 
use and the perceived availability of ready cash can lead to overspending when presented with the wide array of possibilities in the online marketplace. Couple this with increasing interest rates, and you really have a recipe for financial disaster.
As you can plainly see, using your credit card to shop online can ruin your financial stability. It is much safer and equally simple to use an electronic fund transfer service such as Internet Banking for all of your online transactions.
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