It’s not like it doesn’t make sense though. It makes sense that a credit card works the way it does because real-time authorization isn’t always available, and because there is a lot of legacy/backwards compatibility going on. If you wanted to “fix” credit cards you would get rid of them completely and switch to an identity service that allowed you to “federate” your identity with a lender’s service.
It sounds great, but in practice getting all of the ancillary parts working with each other is tough. Look how long Apple Pay (one of the better implementations of a better credit card) has been around and there are still a lot of places that don’t accept it.
Thinking about privacy as a 1:1 exchange with a service is already thinking two steps behind. Services have been using your info to create targeted ads since the beginning of capitalism. It really stepped up their game when computers and databases got involved, and as the internet became more prolific it got even more precise.
We’re at a point where your info isn’t even being used to target you. It’s valuable on its own.
And that’s the trade. You trade something of value to a service so that you can use their service.
Privacy is not important because we lost control of it a long time ago. It will take an act of Congress (in the US) to make it better, and there’s so much money involved that no one wants to tackle it head on.