5 ms·

How does digital euro replace credit cards? That's basically the same as direct debit. It doesn't address the reason why I use credit cards. I use credit cards

• toomuchtodo 4mo ago
  It’s fancy instant payments, which most of the developed world already has. The question is which unnecessary intermediaries do you continue to remove as you refactor legacy financial infra. Credit card rails are expensive legacy rails, that part of the stack is the target to disrupt in this context. In the context of the digital euro, you can think of it as a demand deposit account backed by the central bank (as most fiat deposit accounts are in some way) that is portable between banks, like you’d move a US investment account that can hold securities between brokers with ACATS at the clearinghouse. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48415854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48415854 (recent subthread with some related context) Global instant payment system map: https://www.pymnts.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/PYMNTS-Real-Time-Payments-World-Map-May-2025.pdf https://www.pymnts.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/PYMNTS-Rea... [pdf]
  • drstewart 4mo ago
    >It’s fancy instant payments That's a massive oversimplification, and doesn't even address the OP's point that directly challenges this. Lot of errors in your post. Not to mention the fact that you confuse Mastercard and Visa for "credit card rails" further underscores this.
    • toomuchtodo 4mo ago
      The exact technical details aren’t terribly relevant imho, just that the EU has found the will to implement a superior value storage and transfer system, a benefit of which is avoiding US entities and infra. I have intentionally simplified for the layman audience, and understand if you take issue with my simplification. Your comment history shows a decidedly anti EU sentiment, including against EU sovereignty (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48515118 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48515118, for example), make of that what you will. > How come the EU is making a "digital sovereignty" push? Why are only EU people allowed to compete for EU services? Are there no evil people in the EU? I like tech that improves efficiency (disintermediating unnecessary US commercial payment processors) and decouples from proven threat actors and nation state aggressors, that is my interest on this topic, ymmv.
• pragma_x 4mo ago
  I was wondering about this. I wonder if there are insurance products to close this gap? Or maybe some banks offer accounts with different kinds of purchase protection. I'm with you. While I'm no fan of the risk involved with missing a CC payment, there's a mountain of difference between credit and debit when it comes to fraud. It's literally you trying to get your money back (debit) versus some giant corporation trying to get _its_ money back (credit).
  • omnimus 4mo ago
    There are still protections from the bank/visa/mastercard network. Somebody somehow stole my card credentials (online i think) and managed to get money out of my debit account through some obscure way without 2FA. The money disappeared but transactions showed up as “uncleared” and after few days i had money back. My bank said that i have to wait for the transactions to clear before they can start the transaction dispute because now it's in network hands.
• poisonborz 4mo ago
  In EU most people use direct debit. The term "credit card" is almost synonymous with debit. Chargebacks theoretically exists but they are more complicated, I don't know anyone who ever did that.
  • mothballed 4mo ago
    How do you deal with fraud and people cleaning out your bank account money rather than OPM of a credit card company? Just have enough spare cash for a burner checking account and wait for the fraud reversal? In the US you'll almost always get your money back if someone defrauds your debit card but you could be in for a painful time if you depend on the money in that checking account until it gets fixed.
    • jonathanlydall 4mo ago
      Banks suck it up, but fraud is likely a lot less prevalent because 3D Secure is mandatory for online transactions and chip and PIN were ubiquitous way before the US seemed to have started using it.
      • lxgr 4mo ago
        The US still hasn't started using PINs for all credit and most debit transactions, and at this point it doesn't look like it ever will. Apple and Google Pay are just as (if not more) secure anyway for the majority of transactions, and a long tail of US restaurants, hotels, corporate card issuers, rental car agencies etc. will simply never change their legacy flows. There are just too many incumbent stakeholders.
        • jonathanlydall 4mo ago
          It’s a pity that US regulators can’t manage to mandate that the dinosaurs get with the times as fraud seems to me to be an enormous burden to US consumers. Even if fraud victims get their money back, firstly it must be an admin headache and then merchants have to cover fraud losses/insurance costs and thus mark up all their prices to make sure they do, so everyone is subsidising the fraudsters. I presume it’s lobbying that would/does thwart any attempts at any such regulation. As someone outside of the US I would like to be able to largely ignore this problem as just affecting people over there, but unfortunately it spills into the rest of the world. When I last had fraud on my card it was through an online US merchant, because, like most US online merchants, they don’t use 3D secure. If they did then blocking the transaction for me would have been as simple as pressing the “it’s fraud” option when my phone would have received a “do you want to allow this transaction of $X for Y in the US?” that my bank’s 3D secure system normally sends to me. Hopefully Apple and Google Pay will eventually help things over there.
• Hikikomori 4mo ago
  We just don't have that much fraud instead.
  • larkost 4mo ago
    I don't have numbers for you, but I do know that every European I know is much more worried about card fraud than the Americans I know. One quick example is that the Europeans get very nervous when the waiter takes the credit card away from the table in the U.S.. This is just not done in Europe because there is a (at least perceived) history of skimming in much of Europe. One big difference is that in the U.S. cardholders are largely protected from credit card fraud (not debit card fraud), so the card vendors have to take the risk and so have robust anti-fraud measures (both before and after payment). Largely it is the merchants who have to prove that there was no fraud. Whereas in Europe the burden of evidence (not proof) is with the cardholder.
    • Hikikomori 4mo ago
      Taking a card away from the table is weird for us because it's not what we do here so it becomes suspicious. Even so skimming is much less of a problem since chip and pin were introduced. Nobody I know has had any issues with fraud. We also require 2fa for online purchases. There's also a large difference between counties. In the Nordics its ubiquitous, I haven't carried or needed cash for almost 20 years. Meanwhile Germany has barely started to use cards.
    • Rexxar 4mo ago
      It's seem completely crazy to me to give your card to a waiter.
    • lxgr 4mo ago
      Yes, because handing over your card to a stranger is considered a fairly crazy thing to do in most countries other than the US, as cards require PIN entry for most transactions (which actually does meaningfully prevent in-person card fraud). In the US, you simply have no choice if you want to eat in a restaurant, so people are used to it. I'd expect total skimming rates to be higher in the US, since magnetic stripe transactions have been phased out in effectively all other countries. People don't care because they don't directly pay for the resulting fraud out of pocket. As a society, of course everybody still pays for it. > Largely it is the merchants who have to prove that there was no fraud No, in-store, it's the issuing bank that's liable, even in the US (unless the card is PIN-preferring, which is usually only true for foreign cards).
• awongh 4mo ago
  For a lot of Americans the credit card system is another tax on being poor: People with stable jobs and good credit qualify for no-fee credit cards with rewards / cashback. As a consumer you benefit financially from having a credit card. Those elsewhere in the thread worried about "debt" - you just set to auto-withdrawl the entire balance of the card every month from your bank account. Now you have free money. I can't think of a reason not to take advantage of this system in some way. But people with unstable jobs and poor credit help subsidize these "higher-end" credit cards when they pay high interest rates on their because they missed payments or hold a balance over multiple months. For those people credit cards could help with monthly cashflow issues but are essentially a scam and not much better than payday loans. Yet another system that American consumers are kind of forced to participate in that's a sort of tragedy of the commons (high-reward cards wouldn't exist without the exploitation of other people not savvy enough to avoid high interest and fees)
  • gpvos 4mo ago
    There is no such thing as free money, you're paying for it somehow. Maybe higher processing fees, maybe beggars on the streets and a society out of whack.
  • kevin_thibedeau 4mo ago
    With autopay, you end up with two months of utilization stacked up. Even with a higher limit, you'll be penalized versus paying off completely like a charge card.
• epolanski 4mo ago
  Your transactions aren't tied to some provider in New York blocking you over night?
  • lxgr 4mo ago
    Which provider in New York are you referring to?
  • gpvos 4mo ago
    Please elaborate.
    • deleted 4mo ago
      [deleted]
• lxgr 4mo ago
  So you're really using credit cards as a proxy for a consumer-friendly (at least with regard to fraud/disputes) payments product. Credit cards being more consumer friendly than bank transfers is usually an artifact of the concrete implementation, not the abstract concept. In many EU/SEPA countries, returning a direct debit is much easier than a chargeback in the US, for example. In some countries, people even consider credit cards as less secure because filing a chargeback takes marginally longer with most banks (and requires a letter as opposed to a single click in online banking). If the digital euro is to succeed, it'll of course have to compete with cards on the usability side as well.
  • megaman821 4mo ago
    It's not just the chargeback process; it is that fraud actually removes money your account potentially causing other payments, like your mortgage, to default. With a credit card you have a month to get things straightened out before a payment is due.
    • gpvos 4mo ago
      As long as you don't go too far below zero, payments will go through. This may differ a bit per country.
      • lxgr 4mo ago
        This differs a lot by country and customer. For example, in Germany, without a fixed income, you’ll usually not get access to an overdraft loan. In the US, overdraft is generally considered a very bad thing (almost worse than the idea of credit to Germans!) and a failure of the accountholder to “balance their (figurative, today) checkbook”, and the idea of an overdraft limit as a line of credit with a defined interest rate does not exist at all.
        • gpvos 4mo ago
          Yes, I was highlighting the difference with the US system. Another difference is that if you know someone's account number, you can send them money but not take any out of their account. I understand it's more or less the other way round in the US.
• sunshine-o 4mo ago
  > How does digital euro replace credit cards? That's basically the same as direct debit. It doesn't address the reason why I use credit cards. Exactly, it is just their latest marketing move to have people accept it. I was in a meeting at the ECB 6 years ago, the digital euro was high priority and we were supposed to see the first pilot 5 years ago. The project is actually older and I saw schematic of the system and screenshot and the management interface 6 years ago. It was developed by a German company. I am not sure why we are not using it right now... it can either be: - the urgency, like upcoming financial collapse, disappeared, - the bank lobbied so hard they killed the previous design, - the EU is just insanely incompetent.