It sounds to me like what we need is a single place where I can deposit my credit card info, which I trust is secure, and then all the merchants transact with m

It sounds to me like what we need is a single place where I can deposit my credit card info, which I trust is secure, and then all the merchants transact with me by doing some version of auth against that web service/api without ever exchanging any credit card numbers. For consumers this is great, since they never have to update their credit card info on 10 million places. It's good for businesses, too. That kind of service would undercut one of the main premises behind bitcoin usefullness.