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.
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.
Some Citi cards and privacy.com let you do this. Privacy.com takes a business day or two to verify you though
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.
My provider unfortunately doesn't, so I have to rely on PayPal as the proxy. I use USD, so I guess I won't be too affected, but it is a bummer that I can't seem to ditch them.
Use a virtual card like the ones from privacy. You can select if it’s a one time payment or a monthly payment and set limits.
It saved me many times from companies charging me way more than I agreed to. (Bought a phone and never activated it, they tried to charge me $150 the next year, but I used a virtual card!)
Look into the Privacy app (kind of a terrible name honestly). It's effectively a Paypal type system but one that issues CC numbers for each vendor or transaction and allows you to easily audit and manage them. It's not perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than Paypal.
It's not a credit card, but I use Revolut and they have temporary virtual debit cards on their free plan even. They work a single time per generated card only. Great also if you want a 1 month subscription of something and don't trust yourself to cancel it.
Btw this feature is exactly why certain companies are also banning Revolut cards; turns out authorizes for payments on a card that is about to disappear is a great way to not have to pay for anything (the Dutch OVPay had fraud issues with these cards for example).