this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2025
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Meh. Paypal deserves everything bad that happens to it. Barely used it in the last few years. Definitely do NOT keep funds on there unless you're okay with just losing them.
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.
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).
Long ago, I used to work for a small business that did most of its sales through eBay using PayPal. They were the single biggest impediment to our business, yoinking money away at the slightest excuse. It seemed like they just lived to screw us over.