My bank (Swedbank/Sparbanken Nord) forces you to do it like that. They won't approve online payments on your regular card, instead you have to go to their website and create a temporary card number with a limited balance and an expiration date counted in months rather than years.
As a customer I prefer the US model: Give your card number to pretty much everyone, mark off the fraudulent/unwanted transactions on your account each month, carry on.
Frankly, I don't want the hassle -however small- of having to dispute recorded charges. I much rather prefer that fraudulent charges be declined for reasons of insufficient funds. [0]
It might surprise you to learn that I manually instruct my bank to send checks to my creditors each and every month. Maybe I'm nuts. shrug
[0] Yes, I recognize that there's a potential race condition that might enable a fraudulent txn while denying me the ability to complete one of my own txns. Not much I can do about it with the tools that my otherwise wonderful bank gives me. :)
