But then what's your complaint? That's the status quo.

I didn't complain, as such.

My original post in this trail described how I minimise the risk that I have to faf around because of the status quo, which also reduces the potential for my direct payment data leaking due to security snafus, in the absence of the virtual card option in my locale. The one you replied to questioned one point in your description, which seemed to suggest that being banned by a bad trader was a problem.

Though I'll grant that being blocked could be an issue if that merchant was the only supplier for something that you particularly need.

For me, I still buy games on Steam because my kids want them (I just try hard to find them elsewhere first). Steam just make it hard for me to do that, which is insane when the root of preventing me is a couple of quid they refused to refund when they sold a game they knew was broken.

Of course they don't care about that, it's the £10s across millions of customers that they possibly retain unlawfully that makes it worthwhile.