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It's been years since I've used any debit card. I'm scared to use my debit card, preferring a credit card in almost every case. The one exception is when I need

It's been years since I've used any debit card. I'm scared to use my debit card, preferring a credit card in almost every case. The one exception is when I need to get cash from an account(and I tend to just visit the bank in-person for that, rather than risk an ATM or grocery store machine being rigged). I understand that my credit card has very strong protections by law, since the bank has loaned me money and people do not have to pay back debts that are not theirs, the bank is at risk of losing money in the event of fraud. Debit cards claim similar protections, but since my actual money was transferred I am the one at risk of losing money in the event of fraud. The bank isn't as motivated to investigate my case, since they're not at risk as much. For a similar reason, I'm scared of checks. If you write someone a check, that's enough information for them to drain the associated account. It's free to query the bank to see "Does this account have $X?", so a binary search will let you know the balance of any account on a check. Then they can withdraw it at any time. It's especially bad for checks written against business checking accounts, since they're not protected by consumer protection laws that allow for 60 days to find fraud but rather by the Uniform Commercial Code that only allows a single day to catch fraud. Do I really want to check on my bank account every single day? For now, I just live with that terror and only write checks to people big enough to sue. No SaaS app will ever get a check from me without me doing some restructuring on my bank accounts.

kintamanimatt 11y ago
Aren't checks an anachronism in the US yet? I'd have thought bank transfers would have been more widely adopted in the US by now. I tend to use my debit cards more than credit cards. I've occasionally had to make chargebacks for fraudulent use and there's been no perceptible difference between a credit card chargeback and a debit card chargeback. The bank does the job equally well no matter the type of account. It's all fairly seamless and has always been done quickly by phone. The biggest risk I foresee is losing my wallet, not a fraudulent transaction. That's why I have two wallets with two set of cards, so I can easily failover to that wallet while replacement cards are being generated. The only interesting event that the bank couldn't/wouldn't fix was the time when Best Buy somehow auth'd my card dozens of times in a row for a reasonably expensive laptop. They managed to reduce my available balance far, far into the negative. Obviously they were just authorizations, not final sales, so the money never actually came out of my account, but it was interesting how my bank was happy to let me go many thousands overdrawn and their fraud systems didn't kick in at all. That card was useless until the authorizations dropped off the account.
- sveiss 11y ago
  > Aren't checks an anachronism in the US yet? I'd have thought bank transfers would have been more widely adopted in the US by now. Not only are checks not an anachronism yet, in some cases a bill payment done through online banking will cause a check to be printed by the bank and mailed to the payee.

kintamanimatt 11y ago

Aren't checks an anachronism in the US yet? I'd have thought bank transfers would have been more widely adopted in the US by now. I tend to use my debit cards more than credit cards. I've occasionally had to make chargebacks for fraudulent use and there's been no perceptible difference between a credit card chargeback and a debit card chargeback. The bank does the job equally well no matter the type of account. It's all fairly seamless and has always been done quickly by phone. The biggest risk I foresee is losing my wallet, not a fraudulent transaction. That's why I have two wallets with two set of cards, so I can easily failover to that wallet while replacement cards are being generated. The only interesting event that the bank couldn't/wouldn't fix was the time when Best Buy somehow auth'd my card dozens of times in a row for a reasonably expensive laptop. They managed to reduce my available balance far, far into the negative. Obviously they were just authorizations, not final sales, so the money never actually came out of my account, but it was interesting how my bank was happy to let me go many thousands overdrawn and their fraud systems didn't kick in at all. That card was useless until the authorizations dropped off the account.

sveiss 11y ago
> Aren't checks an anachronism in the US yet? I'd have thought bank transfers would have been more widely adopted in the US by now. Not only are checks not an anachronism yet, in some cases a bill payment done through online banking will cause a check to be printed by the bank and mailed to the payee.