[steveklabnik]

> Or when they ask for my name and my credit card is in their hand.

This is useful for a number of reasons, one of the biggest is trans individuals.

I had a situation where I was at a table where the check was split. The waitress decided to hand ours back individually, so she started calling out names... leading to embarrassment for basically everyone involved, and possibly out-ing someone who may not want their sex known. Luckily, we were all friends, so no harm to that individual... but you just don't know.

[gehar]

Good (if rare) example of why it is not appropriate to take information provided for one purpose (payment authorization) and use it for another purpose (general communication).

The same restraint should apply to dumping my payment information into spam marketing databases.