Well, I used to be rather critical of 3D Secure until a few months ago. My wife's card (on our shared account) got compromised and a 300 euros or so payment was

Well, I used to be rather critical of 3D Secure until a few months ago. My wife's card (on our shared account) got compromised and a 300 euros or so payment was made with it. No 3D Secure enabled for her because she had not given her cell phone number to the bank. Our bank refunded it alright, though it took about a month, but the next week I received an SMS with a 3D Secure confirmation number for a similar payment, in HKD, with my own card (by the way, the only place we used both cards for payments was Taobao). I was able to call my bank which blocked the card and quickly issued me a new one. At least in this case it both saved us, our bank and some unknown online shop, time and money. Also, I think the smart way to do 3D Secure is what capitainetrain.com does, they use it only for the first payment of a customer (and explain what's going to happen during the payment process) and all subsequent purchases don't go through it (since the customer has already been verified as being legitimate). It only works when you expect customers to come back regularly, though.