[icebraining]

Laws requiring an "increase of privacy of payment information" fall under the same problem of Playing chicken with cat.jpg[1]. In essence, they help, but human honesty and compliance with the rules is still a very weak replacement for a solution where the information is not accessible at all.

There are some academic proposals and proofs-of-concept implementing anonymous electronic payments, but while they may prove worthy successors of cash, they are certainly not ready.

[1] http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-01-19-playing-chicken-w...