To expand upon the author's idea, the problem is not just that credit card data is reusable, but that possession of credit card data amounts to permission to charge any arbitrary amount to it . Not legal permission, mind you, but permission in the sense that the infrastructure lets you do it, and you have to sort out the consequences through social/legal channels after the fact. Not only should future payment systems…
> possession of credit card data amounts to permission to charge any arbitrary amount to it The word you're looking for is "capability", not permission. Permission requires consent, which is something you give separately from the actual card number. A minor point, but I think it changes the tone of that statement. > possession of credit card data amounts to the capability to charge any arbitrary amount to it I'm not…
Not in this case. There's no reason the merchant can't send a request for a specific amount, encrypted using your credit account's public key and signed by their private key. Your credit authorizing device (smartphone, desktop app, phone call, whatever) then asks you to confirm the amount, and that amount is sent back to the merchant. I'm sure there's some way of cryptographically tying the request for funds to the transmission of funds so that it's clear what transaction the funds are for, that the amount sent matches the amount requested, etc.