| Regulations are indeed the reason that Europe does not have proxy cards, but pretty indirectly: In the US, debit card interchange is heavily regulated for most issuers (to an extremely low rate of 0.05% plus a flat 0.24$ per transaction, which can be frustrating for microtransactions, but that's a different story). Some issuers are exempt from this requirement, though – very likely including the one that Privacy/Lithic use. This gives them a very nice arbitrage opportunity which can pay for the product and even return a profit. In Europe, there is no such exemption, so a proxy card can even theoretically never be profitable (you earn 0.2% but also pay 0.2% per debit transaction, and after network fees, you're in the red). What would be possible is to offer single-used debit cards that are funded from a bank account via direct debit, which is effectively fee-free (but decidedly not risk-free). Privacy offers that option as well in the US. But given the direction into which the EU is moving (heavily guided by regulation), which is to effectively mandate 3D Secure for almost all online transactions, it's questionable how much demand for such a product there really will be, going forward. |