I use XP_Crypt all the time without difficulty. Of course, I have a licensed copy.
Is your copy licensed? Consider: An unlicensed copy XP_Crypt only encodes up to 15 characters. Credit card numbers for MasterCard and Visa are 16 digits. AMEX is 15. If you are evalutating XP_Crypt, MC and Visa account numbers will not decode completely from an encoded string.