On June 19, Facebook appeared to ease some of its terms for payments on the social network. CNBC, for example, claimed that Facebook made “changes to its payments system to make it easier for developers to drive payments on their apps.”

The fact: Facebook also made it easier to screw its users.

Let’s start with the basics. On the 19th, Facebook did away with its “Facebook Credits or nothing” policy. Effectively, this policy required users of Facebook — both consumers and app developers/owners — to use Facebook’s online currency. Facebook Credits allowed Facebook to charge a 30% fee on digital payments on its network, a healthy rate to say the least.

As our trusted news source, CNBC, described it, “This eliminates the clunky step of users having to purchase Facebook credits before paying to buy virtual goods in a game like Zynga’s Farmville, or before using those credits to say, stream a movie.”

And that is largely true.

But Facebook slipped a new and far more onerous condition into its Payments terms. The terms state:

At-will use. We may revoke your eligibility to use Facebook Payments at any time at our sole discretion.

How do you like them apples? Facebook can just cut any user off from Payments — and their current account of online money. At will. At any time. For any reason. Ouch!

Facebook already had strident legal terms before June 19. For example, Facebook stipulated that it could simply revoke free or promotional Credits a user might have earned or received at any time and for no reason whatsoever. But these new conditions take it to another level, in my view. The terms highlight a real and as-of-today glossed over reality of digital payments: that individual enterprises and not the traditional purveyor of currency — the federal government — controls the rules now. And that might not always be so beneficial to you and me.