> soon you have to feed every third grade company with it
Many payments on the web are done by handing over payment card details and trusting the merchant to bill the correct amount.
The alternative is to use a middle-man like PayPal.
It's absurd that the banks and credit card companies haven't come up with a better solution than handing over your card details and taking it on trust, but here we are, and online sales are doing fine.
Right but if a company has a buy with Google/Amazon/PayPal/Apple button you better believe I'm taking that option immediately over giving yet another random company that I trust less than a 2am gyro cart unfettered access to my credit card details.
The real kicker being that you aren't just trusting their honesty, you're trusting their long-term data security.
It's a regular occurrence for companies of all sizes to fail to protect customers' payment card information. For some reason, no-one talks about how preposterous is it that we still handle many online payments through total trust.
Little comfort knowing your card details will eventually expire, especially considering that they no longer really do [0]
As you say, far better to go the PayPal route, despite their considerable problems [1]
Many payments on the web are done by handing over payment card details and trusting the merchant to bill the correct amount.
The alternative is to use a middle-man like PayPal.
It's absurd that the banks and credit card companies haven't come up with a better solution than handing over your card details and taking it on trust, but here we are, and online sales are doing fine.