this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2025
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I mean, I don't want to keep funds in PayPal, but they make a good proxy for a credit card.
Credit card POS systems permit for me to do (reasonably, lack a trusted display or input mechanism) secure transactions. But I can't do that with my computer
I don't have a way to use a smartcard reader and purchase things online. I have to send my actual credentials to a vendor and trust that they're treating them securely.
But if you use PayPal to pay at a vendor and then send that payment to a credit card, you avoid the security problems inherent to direct personal use of credit cards.
I'm not comfortable sending credit card data to sketchy-looking sites. With PayPal, worst case they don't send me whatever I paid for.
You should see if any of your credit cards allow you to make virtual credit cards. I can make an entirely new card with a unique number, expiration and code then lock/delete them or even restrict them to the first retailer they’re used at. I have like a dozen virtual cards that only work at a single retailer and lock them all until I need to use them. While locked all attempts to use them are declined.
I don't know if they do, but I've used a service before that provides similar functionality, a "temporary proxy credit card", which also permits one to not even provide one's real name and address to a vendor.
But it's more work to set one up than it is to do a PayPal transaction. Like, I could do it if a vendor doesn't permit for PayPal payments and I really really want what the vendor is selling, but PayPal does the big "the vendor doesn't get your credentials" security fix and avoids creating extra hurdles for a purchaser to jump through.
Revolut literally has this as a feature, single-use cards.
Additionally at least in Europe 3Dsecure is very common. It's opt-in which makes it kinda weird, but still widely used.