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>Like many fellow Europeans I don't have a credit card, so if that is the only way to pay, I'd have to jump through a lot of hoops to buy this. I find this sur

>Like many fellow Europeans I don't have a credit card, so if that is the only way to pay, I'd have to jump through a lot of hoops to buy this. I find this surprising. At least in Portugal it's now common to buy stuff online with a credit card, either with an actual card or with one of those simple services the bank provides where they generate a virtual card on demand for you to use for a single purchase.

dEnigma 9y ago
Anecdotal of course, but here in Austria I know a lot of people without credit cards (myself included). The people who own credit cards are mostly frequent travellers, since it's easier to buy plane tickets if you have one (I was lucky enough to always have had at least one person with a credit among my travel partners, so I could just pay them by bank transfer or in cash later). AFAIK no one in my close family circle has a credit card. edit: According to the Austrian National Bank the number of issued credit cards in Austria was 2,85 mio. in 2012, compared to 8,5 mio. debit cards (population: 8.747 million (2016)), and the amount of credit cards was growing rapidly. Seems like there are more people with credit cards than I thought. https://www.oenb.at/en/Payment-Processing/Card-Payments/Cards.html https://www.oenb.at/en/Payment-Processing/Card-Payments/Card... edit2: Statistics Austria has the percentage of households with credit cards at 53% in 2014 http://www.statistik.at/web_de/statistiken/menschen_und_gesellschaft/soziales/ausstattung_privater_haushalte/021850.html http://www.statistik.at/web_de/statistiken/menschen_und_gese... (German, it's the bottom row)
- 4ad 9y ago
  I also live in Austria. People look at me very weird when I try to pay with Visa/Mastercard credit cards at retail shops rather than using the worthless Maestro debit cards. I don't have any friends who have credit cards. The real problem here has nothing to do with credit cards though, but with the unavailability of Visa/Mastercards debit cards in many European countries. For example, in my home country, Romania, very few people have credit cards, possibly even less than in Austria (edit: after your edit, definitely less), but everybody has a Visa/Mastecard debit card. No such thing in Austria. I heard that even in Germany it's hard to get a Visa/Mastercard debit card. People don't want credit cards for various reasons, that's fine, although personally I don't agree with their reasoning, but Visa/Mastercard should still be available as a platform rather than being restricted to credit cards.
  - dEnigma 9y ago
    Interesting. I have to admit, I didn't even know there were MasterCard/Visa debit cards. If I may ask: Why do you think Maestro debit cards are "worthless"? Because they aren't part of the whole MasterCard/Visa ecosystem, or for other reasons?
    - 4ad 9y ago
      In general, almost useless for online transactions (the whole point of this sub-thread). Apart from that very low worldwide acceptance, and even when it's accepted in theory, it rarely works in practice in countries not accustomed to them. For example when I go to the US I often see the Maestro logo on various retail shops or PoS machine, but I have never been able to successfully make a transaction, ever. In fact, even ATMs are sometimes hit and miss, though those usually work. Oh yeah, and they are in general unusable with hotels and car rentals, even in Europe. It's the same with Amex in Europe. Almost all big supermarkets (Spar, Merkur, etc) display Amex sign on their entrance, but I have never met an employee that knew what to do with Amex cards. At least Amex cards, unlike Maestro cards, have, or can have good benefits like airline miles and whatever. You get nothing with Maestro.
    - fpig 9y ago
      A Visa debit card, at least the one I have, can "pretend" to be a credit card so you can enter it into a credit card payment form same as with an actual Visa credit card. It has worked for every online payment I tried so far. As far as I know, you can't do this with a Maestro card (at least not with mine). The advantage of that over an actual credit card is security and cost control: I have a separate bank account only for my Visa debit card. This account has overdraft disabled and will bounce payments instead at no cost to me. I keep a balance close to zero on this account. When I want to pay something online, I quickly do a transfer in that amount from my main account to my "Visa account", then pay. This will immediately subtract funds from my account, or the payment will immediately fail if there isn't enough (but there will be as I just transferred it). This means my card is fraud-proof except in the unlikely case of someone managing to make a payment during the couple of seconds between me pressing transfer in my bank app and pressing pay wherever I'm paying. And even if they did that, they'd be limited to the amount of my intended purchase.
sctb 9y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14956811 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14956811 and marked it off-topic.
- pedrocr 9y ago
  This is quite surprising. I assume you mean it's offtopic for this particular discussion and not offtopic for HN in general right? Even so it seems strange to shut off a discussion like that just because it started from a tangent of a topic. What's the benefit? Edit: there are also 2 other sibling comments that are about the same topic and left behind.
  - sctb 9y ago
    The discussion isn't shut off, it's just that users shouldn't have to scroll through a long digression about credit cards at the top of a thread about the Talos.
    - pedrocr 9y ago
      The context of the original comment gets lost and the [-] functionality makes skipping subthreads easy enough so I don't see the advantage.
madez 9y ago
Why do you find it surprising? They cost money and provide little benefit (for me). Some vendors accept them but charge extra for it, which I consider fair.
- anoother 9y ago
  I'm not sure about the rest of Europe, but in the UK most credit cards don't cost money. Unless you don't pay your bills, of course. But direct debit takes care of that.
  - madez 9y ago
    They surely do cost money, but you pay it indirectly. Somebody first pays the fees and the card itself, and ultimately you are going to pay. There are alternatives that are cheaper and work just as fine. Thankfully not every country is already majorly infected by credit cards.
    - pedrocr 9y ago
      >There are alternatives that are cheaper and work just as fine. Do you have an example? Debit cards have very similar cost structures, cash is more expensive to handle.
      - madez 9y ago
        Lastschrift works fine for me.
        pedrocr 9y ago
        And you can use that to buy goods online? Direct debit is usually used for recurrent billing. In Portugal there's a way to use a similar system for online purchases by generating a code that you then have to use in an ATM or online banking. It makes for a pretty poor customer experience when purchasing and I doubt it's actually cheaper these days than debit/credit payment processing.

dEnigma 9y ago

Anecdotal of course, but here in Austria I know a lot of people without credit cards (myself included). The people who own credit cards are mostly frequent travellers, since it's easier to buy plane tickets if you have one (I was lucky enough to always have had at least one person with a credit among my travel partners, so I could just pay them by bank transfer or in cash later). AFAIK no one in my close family circle has a credit card. edit: According to the Austrian National Bank the number of issued credit cards in Austria was 2,85 mio. in 2012, compared to 8,5 mio. debit cards (population: 8.747 million (2016)), and the amount of credit cards was growing rapidly. Seems like there are more people with credit cards than I thought. https://www.oenb.at/en/Payment-Processing/Card-Payments/Cards.html https://www.oenb.at/en/Payment-Processing/Card-Payments/Card... edit2: Statistics Austria has the percentage of households with credit cards at 53% in 2014 http://www.statistik.at/web_de/statistiken/menschen_und_gesellschaft/soziales/ausstattung_privater_haushalte/021850.html http://www.statistik.at/web_de/statistiken/menschen_und_gese... (German, it's the bottom row)

4ad 9y ago
I also live in Austria. People look at me very weird when I try to pay with Visa/Mastercard credit cards at retail shops rather than using the worthless Maestro debit cards. I don't have any friends who have credit cards. The real problem here has nothing to do with credit cards though, but with the unavailability of Visa/Mastercards debit cards in many European countries. For example, in my home country, Romania, very few people have credit cards, possibly even less than in Austria (edit: after your edit, definitely less), but everybody has a Visa/Mastecard debit card. No such thing in Austria. I heard that even in Germany it's hard to get a Visa/Mastercard debit card. People don't want credit cards for various reasons, that's fine, although personally I don't agree with their reasoning, but Visa/Mastercard should still be available as a platform rather than being restricted to credit cards.
- dEnigma 9y ago
  Interesting. I have to admit, I didn't even know there were MasterCard/Visa debit cards. If I may ask: Why do you think Maestro debit cards are "worthless"? Because they aren't part of the whole MasterCard/Visa ecosystem, or for other reasons?
  - 4ad 9y ago
    In general, almost useless for online transactions (the whole point of this sub-thread). Apart from that very low worldwide acceptance, and even when it's accepted in theory, it rarely works in practice in countries not accustomed to them. For example when I go to the US I often see the Maestro logo on various retail shops or PoS machine, but I have never been able to successfully make a transaction, ever. In fact, even ATMs are sometimes hit and miss, though those usually work. Oh yeah, and they are in general unusable with hotels and car rentals, even in Europe. It's the same with Amex in Europe. Almost all big supermarkets (Spar, Merkur, etc) display Amex sign on their entrance, but I have never met an employee that knew what to do with Amex cards. At least Amex cards, unlike Maestro cards, have, or can have good benefits like airline miles and whatever. You get nothing with Maestro.
  - fpig 9y ago
    A Visa debit card, at least the one I have, can "pretend" to be a credit card so you can enter it into a credit card payment form same as with an actual Visa credit card. It has worked for every online payment I tried so far. As far as I know, you can't do this with a Maestro card (at least not with mine). The advantage of that over an actual credit card is security and cost control: I have a separate bank account only for my Visa debit card. This account has overdraft disabled and will bounce payments instead at no cost to me. I keep a balance close to zero on this account. When I want to pay something online, I quickly do a transfer in that amount from my main account to my "Visa account", then pay. This will immediately subtract funds from my account, or the payment will immediately fail if there isn't enough (but there will be as I just transferred it). This means my card is fraud-proof except in the unlikely case of someone managing to make a payment during the couple of seconds between me pressing transfer in my bank app and pressing pay wherever I'm paying. And even if they did that, they'd be limited to the amount of my intended purchase.

sctb 9y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14956811 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14956811 and marked it off-topic.

pedrocr 9y ago
This is quite surprising. I assume you mean it's offtopic for this particular discussion and not offtopic for HN in general right? Even so it seems strange to shut off a discussion like that just because it started from a tangent of a topic. What's the benefit? Edit: there are also 2 other sibling comments that are about the same topic and left behind.
- sctb 9y ago
  The discussion isn't shut off, it's just that users shouldn't have to scroll through a long digression about credit cards at the top of a thread about the Talos.
  - pedrocr 9y ago
    The context of the original comment gets lost and the [-] functionality makes skipping subthreads easy enough so I don't see the advantage.

madez 9y ago

Why do you find it surprising? They cost money and provide little benefit (for me). Some vendors accept them but charge extra for it, which I consider fair.

anoother 9y ago
I'm not sure about the rest of Europe, but in the UK most credit cards don't cost money. Unless you don't pay your bills, of course. But direct debit takes care of that.
- madez 9y ago
  They surely do cost money, but you pay it indirectly. Somebody first pays the fees and the card itself, and ultimately you are going to pay. There are alternatives that are cheaper and work just as fine. Thankfully not every country is already majorly infected by credit cards.
  - pedrocr 9y ago
    >There are alternatives that are cheaper and work just as fine. Do you have an example? Debit cards have very similar cost structures, cash is more expensive to handle.
    - madez 9y ago
      Lastschrift works fine for me.
      - pedrocr 9y ago
        And you can use that to buy goods online? Direct debit is usually used for recurrent billing. In Portugal there's a way to use a similar system for online purchases by generating a code that you then have to use in an ATM or online banking. It makes for a pretty poor customer experience when purchasing and I doubt it's actually cheaper these days than debit/credit payment processing.