They already do so. The card data is not stored 'in plain text', but encrypted at rest. But for the Hotels there are interfaces that allow these to be exposed to the Hotel employees (accesses of such information are logged). Just prior to displaying them they are decrypted.

You have your facts wrong. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/02/myste...

Would it pain you to spell out which of the facts are wrong?

For the “encrypted at rest” statement I guess it depends on your definition of “at rest”. Email passes through many hands, and random mom-and-pop shops definitely aren’t using PGP. So any emailed credit card information is being stored on many different computers. In theory those kinda of logs should be purged regularly, but who knows.

Looks to me like you got your facts wrong. And your definitions too...