Missing online shopping

Despite the depressing media doomsday dialogue about online shopping, hackers, fraud, theft, blah blah, I'm not afraid to do it. I like the convenience of it, the selection, the fact I can do it in my bunny slippers at home (or would if I actually owned bunny slippers).

Since Canada is finally starting to get it and more and more stores are putting up an online presence complete with shopping cart ability, I'd love to do more and more of my shopping online through real stores rather than just eBay.

Don't get me wrong - I still love eBay. But when you're trying to buy a gift for someone and don't necessarily want to have to worry about whether it will cross the border in time for the big day, you'd much rather keep your money north of the 49th and buy from a store with a true money-back guarantee and liberal return policy.

So why don't I? Because the lack of a simple little piece of plastic prevents me. A credit card.

Used to have one, but ran it up scarily high. The stress of the debt was too much for me. So it got paid off and cancelled. And I'm now CC-less. Feels good...until I go try and shop online.

What I don't understand is why the Canadian banks don't get together and offer an online form of debit payment like the Interac system used in stores, restaurants and even for at-home pizza delivery now too. Heck, apparently 2/3 of the population of this country now use debit cards instead of cash.

Paypal is nice, but few large reputable etailers really want you to "wire" them cash like that. Switch-style debit-cards unwritten by Visa would be even nicer. I had these in Bermuda when I lived there in 1996 and adored it. I could use it as a Visa in places where debit cards don't tread, but the effect was still the same - money direct from my account, rather than ringing up a debt I'd have to pay off eventually.

It's not like it would be that difficult - Canada's banking system is much more homogenized than the US, given banking regulations here. But alas! The banks haven't yet figured out we'd depend on them even more if they offered this kind of service and thus I must live without access to the clicks-and-bricks shopping for the foreseeable future. And they wonder why Canadians lag behind the US in online shopping? Humph!

So when people ask me this year why I didn't do my Christmas shopping online this year, I'll end up mumbling something about the lack of plastic in my life and changing the subject quickly.