Great for merchants, not so much for consumers. Once the merchant has your money it's very difficult to get it back if things go wrong.

Which is pretty much the case with Visa and MC too. There's little card payment fraud in Europe thanks to mandated strong authentication, and very low transaction fees as interchange is capped by the EU; card issuers don't initiate chargebacks so easily.

What is the alternative? I am not sure i can get my money back once they leave the card.