It pretty much is, in the sense that there's no revolving credit associated with the card, merely a monthly limit (typically 2 or 3 thousands euro) and your acc

It pretty much is, in the sense that there's no revolving credit associated with the card, merely a monthly limit (typically 2 or 3 thousands euro) and your account will be overdrawn if there isn't enough money when the bill is charged. The thing is, both Visa and MasterCard have credit and debit versions of their cards. And thanks to recent European laws, the card has to explicitly state which kind it is, since the transaction fees are different for the merchant (and are capped to 0.3 and 0.2% respectively). Now in France, you won't get a Maestro or Vpay card even if you want a true debit card. It'll be a MasterCard or Visa. Payments are either debited right away or at the end of month. And banks have started to emit "debit" cards for the former, and "credit" versions for the latter, but it's completely irrelevant for domestic payments.