Yes, but at the same time Visa requires you to hand over your payment information to each and every merchant you transact with, and they are able to pull as much money from your card as they want, and they are able to charge you multiple times at any point in the future.
But there are some really cool solutions being worked on right now for this problem in bitcoin that can make it scale to a similar way to Visa. But they aren't here yet (and some might turn out to be nonviable). Lightning network would allow Visa levels of transactions per second, at basically zero or next to zero fees per transaction for the majority of them.
It’s possible that merchants could charge you whatever they like for however much they want. But it’s unlikely. And if they did, you would get all your money back and the merchant would pay a fine.
The privacy info is valid, but BTC isn’t private either and people are connecting identities to purchases all the time. Not to mention 99% of the time I must give my info to the merchant so they can mail me whatever I purchased.
It's not the privacy info that's the problem, it's that credit card are "pull" by nature. You give your information to a merchant, and they decide how much and when to charge you.
Vs with bitcoin it's push. You decide how much you are sending to the merchant, and if it's not enough, they don't deliver the goods/services.
But this has completely gotten away from the issue I was talking about (i'm in a shitty mood today and let myself get sucked into internet arguments).
Bitcoin has problems, and those problems aren't going to be easy to solve, but it's ability to change over time means they can be solved, and I really believe that it's a better way of sending money online.
The "pull" method that banks have used for years is a mess, and I truly believe that the core of bitcoin is valuable and useful over the traditional system.
with pin + chip cards debit/credit cards are 100% push for physical transactions. for online transactions almost every single provider offers one time use card numbers
the push/pull problem has been solved for a decade, and not by bitcoin
A one-time use CC# by nature can't be abused. And any merchant that attempts to issue fraudulent charges starts to run into legal and regulatory frameworks that issue punishments to anyone who has repeat violations. Punishments that range from being kicked off of a payment processing system all the way up to jail time.
With newer payment systems such as EMV, your entire payment information is not handed to the merchant. You're just signing the single transaction.
That said, I can't currently put my EMV card into a card reader on my computer and purchase things online. However, many credit card networks have created tokenized payment systems, where the merchant redirects you to your bank, the bank authorizes you and validates the single transaction, and then redirects you back to the merchant with the signed transaction information. Not many merchants use these systems yet though.
>cardholders are not liable for unauthorised transactions by merchants
Assuming they are really fraud and aren't just a "free trial" expiring, aren't a contractually-agreed upon price increase hidden in fine print, or that the cardholder saw the fraud and reported it within 60 days.
Not to mention now the cardholder is now unable to use the card if fraud is found, and needs to wait for a new one to be sent via mail. It would suck if the credit card thought getting gas out of state was fraud, and they canceled your credit card on the first day of a week long trip (happened to me, I had to borrow thousands from a friend for the length of the trip...).
in most civilised countries small print like that would treated as sharp practice and you'd easily be able to force a refund under consumer protection law
in the UK I can walk into my bank branch and have my card replaced on the spot, so I don't really see that as a problem, unless you're abroad (and if you're abroad with only one card you should probably know better)
We have 2 different definitions of "easily". At the very least I need to identify that the charge happened or happened differently (if small, it could take a while). Then I need to make sure that it wasn't a real transaction (both me and my wife use the same cardnumber, so I need to check with her to make sure that "0239-ONLN-PMT-GR" wasn't from something she bought).
Then I can call the bank, tell them I didn't make that transaction, or I didn't agree to it, and if i'm lucky they will refund it right away, then investigate. I then need to follow up on that investigation because if they find for some reason it's not "fraud", then they will recharge me that at a later date, so I need to keep up on it until resolved.
And no matter how easy it is to get a card replaced, it's work that I shouldn't need to do.
I'm not saying that Visa is "broken", or that Bitcoin is the only way forward. But I am saying that I think Bitcoin's core values are better than the current system. And that one day Bitcoin will be easier, more secure, more private, and just as usable as Visa.
Hopefully one day we will look back on the way current payment processes are run and it will seem as terrifying and stupid as if you were required to leave a copy of your car keys at every single parking lot you parked in.
Online wallets and exchanges are similar points of failure. Many users have uploaded their picture IDs, banking and tax information to sites like LocalBitcoins.
>Yes, but at the same time Visa requires you to hand over your payment information to each and every merchant you transact with, and they are able to pull as much money from your card as they want, and they are able to charge you multiple times at any point in the future.
But there are some really cool solutions being worked on right now for this problem in bitcoin that can make it scale to a similar way to Visa. But they aren't here yet (and some might turn out to be nonviable). Lightning network would allow Visa levels of transactions per second, at basically zero or next to zero fees per transaction for the majority of them.