This article will cover and make an effort to help student / people who don’t have a credit card and want to create great app on the windows phone and windows store. In the past, student already happy with the Dreamspark voucher code, but the integration between two accounts make the student should have a credit card to validate the account. So here are the tips.
Tips 1 Having a bank account that has VCN (Virtual Card Number)
So what is VCN?, VCN is just like VCC (Virtual Credit Card) but is different than VCC. If VCC is created by using your credit card / front payment, the VCN is created by using your debit card within selected bank. In Indonesia, There are two major banks that has VCN features which are BNI (Bank Negara Indonesia) and Bank Mandiri. Other bank might be have VCN also features, you can see the VISA logo in Mandiri, and Mastercard logo in BNI that is the clue that support a fundamental characteristics of VCN. Maestro or cirrus based card like BCA card didn’t have this feature for now. VCN will give you a credit card like number including the three digit verification. This will work with Windows Store account (including with Windows Phone) but might not work within Azure.
Tips 2 Link your debit card with VCC (Virtual Credit Card)
Entropay is a VCC merchant provider, you can register with entropay and create a virtual credit card. You can link your debit card with this VCC. This technique might work for windows store / windows phone, but not work with Windows Azure. Entropay support to link your debit card such as BCA Card and others and the good news you can create as many as VCC that you need for your friend and your developer community
Tips 3 Asking Your Parent and Relatives to borrow their CC
This might be silly, but after all this is the best solution if you have a parent that has a credit card. you can ask them to create a VCC or directly use their account to validate your microsoft store
Hope this help several people who need a temporary solution to validate their account, feel free to ask a question on the comments. In the future, education team from microsoft will give you a good solution rather than these three tips, so please take care and be patient.
Cheers,
Ridi