Entrepreneur shares credit card details online, asks social media users to spend

In less than 24 hours, Rahul Krishnan, the co-founder of BoldCare, managed to get a whopping 3.3 million views on his social media post. His trick? He made his credit card details public in a post on X, and willingly shared OTPs (One-Time Password) for transactions below ₹1,000.
In a post on the microblogging website X, Krishnan wrote: “My card number is 4216-8701-5010-2349, the expiration date is 12/30, the security code is 207. Happy Sextember, everyone.”
His ‘bold move’ had some simple rules, which were shared by the X handle of his sexual wellness brand. Only transactions up to ₹1,000 were allowed, following which, he will only reply to the original tweet thread with an OTP.
Curiosity took the best of X users who began to try their luck with random OTPs, thus, triggering a wave of microtransactions.
Krishnan kept his stunt alive for several hours and as he continued sharing countless OTPs in the thread.
The BoldCare co-founder took a “breather” of 30 minutes in between, and shared that he has a limit of ₹3 lakh on his card.
Five hours into the game of spending, Krishnan posted that his number has been blocked, likely due to the volume of microtransactions. “I think my number is blocked, so no more OTPs, unfortunately,” he said.
The transactions spanned across various e-commerce platforms such as Swiggy, Zomato, Blinkit, and Amazon, each under ₹1,000.
According to a post Krishnan shared, a person ordered paneer biryani from Zomato and thanked him for it and promised to purchase from the BoldCare as a “return gift”. In response, the BoldCare co-founder asked for a 5-star review for his company.
The reasons for Krishnan’s actions are still not apparent. While some netizens regarded it as a clever marketing strategy, others criticized it for being irresponsible and highlighted the potential risks.
“Really smart marketing here. This is an SBI prepaid card on Visa’s network. Frankly, I’m appalled that this card hasn’t been flagged yet by Visa or SBI for such a high volume of activity originating from so many different IPs,” said one user.
“Yeh sahi hai waise this man single handedly promoted himself as co-founder of boldcare instead of paying 5-10 lakh to an agency for marketing,” another said.
One user was looking for an answer about “what kind of marketing scam” Krishnan’s post is.
To which, another user said: “wow it looks like he chose to spend the ad budget to just buy ppl what they wanted and get that sweet engagement farming going and plug his brand real cleverly. well played.”