Right, that's my point. There is no technical requirement to be stored as plain-text.
Though I would imagine that encryption, by definition, is two-way (encrypt, decrypt).
As an aside, do merchant account API services provide a secure-token service to store credit card information? That is, I enter in my VISA credit-card, click "save" and Amazon.com gets a unique token back that identifies this credit card. When I later go to purchase an item, Amazon uses this token to with VISA to charge my card? IIRC, that is how Stripe works, but I wonder if each credit card manufacturer now supports this, as part of PCI compliance.
Though I would imagine that encryption, by definition, is two-way (encrypt, decrypt).
As an aside, do merchant account API services provide a secure-token service to store credit card information? That is, I enter in my VISA credit-card, click "save" and Amazon.com gets a unique token back that identifies this credit card. When I later go to purchase an item, Amazon uses this token to with VISA to charge my card? IIRC, that is how Stripe works, but I wonder if each credit card manufacturer now supports this, as part of PCI compliance.