[kristofferR]

Thanks, that was a great example of how the current financial system is only beneficial for the most developed countries. The fact that you actually have it pretty easy compared to the majority of the world, despite the big problems with your situation, says a lot about how bad the current system is.

Credit/debit cards work in a fundamentally flawed way from a security perspective, you essentially give everyone your "money password" each time you pay for something and have to trust them to not abuse it. Because of that a large number of expensive middlemen, checks and barriers are needed inside the system to ensure that the trust is not abused.

One of the easiest and most obvious ways to prevent abuse of a system is to limit access to that system to only trusted actors. And one of the quickest ways of identifying trusted actors is unfortunately discrimination based on things like prosperity and nationality. That's one of the reasons why so many people are prevented from using bank cards, letting them access the system is considered too high of a risk. I guess that's why the Reserve Bank of India require 3-D Secure for debit cards - as a way to mitigate some risk of abuse.

The reason why so many stores don't implement 3-D Secure is actually pretty logical. The extra step in the order process 3-D Secure adds results in a decrease of completed transactions of up to 30%. The only reason why 3D Secure was created in the first place is because the system it was built on top of is so damn insecure.

Bitcoin will help solve this issue, since it removes the need for trust completely. When paying for something with Bitcoin you don't have that fear that the person/company you send money to will grab more money from your card than you allowed, and he/she/they doesn't have to fear that you won't pay.

Because of this Bitcoin may end up creating a much freer financial world open to anyone, no matter their nationality or prosperity.