The other question is if this behavior is not in the end leading people to shift back to cash payments again. I never understood the popularity of offline credit card payments. In fact I never used my credit card for anything outside of online payments, except for one situation where I had to come up with a relatively large and time sensitive on-spot payment. This minor factor of not having to spend each week two minutes at an ATM seems almost ridiculous in contrast to the severe privacy issues ( http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120619/04094319383/data-m... ).
As for that article, I don't need to worry about some "insurance company" caring about my diet since I'm not American. I'm quite sure european privacy laws also forbid sharing of my purchase history outside of the bank.
I actually like the payment process, i.e. handing something over and getting change back. I noticed, the easier the payment process is made (i.e. Amazon/Fiverrs one-click buys) the more I tend to buy things that would fall under the impulse buy category. If I see something in a store and don't have enough money on me, but have to go to the ATM first, I often do instead a more extensive product/price comparison online at home and quite a few times decided against buying anything at all ("do I REALLY need/use this?").
