Some banks will let you generate single-use credit card numbers (e.g., Chase). So you have one CC # for the power company, a different one for Netflix, and so forth. Then if e.g., Netflix gets hacked you can just cancel that one card number. You can also generate cards with hard spending limits, cards that only work for a specific merchant, etc. And of course you can delete them anytime. Its a pretty good system.

That said, I agree with the author. Signature based debit should have long since been replaced by something more secure (e.g., Chip and PIN), yet its much higher fee structure creates a perverse incentive to maintain its use.