Well, then the USA was "third world" long before in-app purchases. When you give someone your debit/CC info, they can basically pull infinitely from your account at any point in the future thus you have to remain eternally vigilant because you once gave someone $5. Which you didn't even do. You gave them the key to your account and trusted them to only take $5, that's how crazy our system is.

Better financial tools/primitives would have gone a long way to prevent the issue in the article which most Americans don't have. I shouldn't need my bank to hopefully create a "virtual card" feature (it doesn't). It should've been ubiquitous 20+ years ago.

This is one reason I use Paypal: I can see a list of organizations authorized to take money out of my account. My bank account and credit cards? I have no fucking idea who might show up next month. Maybe that thing I "canceled" on their website four months ago?

Or I use bitcoin because it's basically cash.