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In my corner of the world, credit cards were for buying stuff on the internet and travelling outside the EU. Now the net has evelved enough to accept our norma

In my corner of the world, credit cards were for buying stuff on the internet and travelling outside the EU. Now the net has evelved enough to accept our normal means of payment. I always feel insecure when using a credit card.

TFNA 3mo ago
Pretty much all of the EU had Visa- and Mastercard-branded debit cards since the turn of the millennium, so one has been able to buy stuff from the net and travel abroad without use of a credit card for decades now.
margalabargala 3mo ago
As a US-ian I feel exactly that way when using a debit card. A credit card, if misused, can run up your balance and then you dispute, and don't pay anything until it's resolved. A debit card, if misused, can drain your account and leave you penniless until it's resolved.
- kevin_thibedeau 3mo ago
  The fraud detection of the card processors is effective and they will disable a debit card before that happens. I've always had the money returned automatically the few times I've had one compromised.
  - ericmay 3mo ago
    Same fraud systems monitor credit cards except in the American case you get at worst 1% cash back so 1% off the purchase price of everything and if something does happen, and regardless of protections fraud still occurs, it’s the bank’s money that is gone and not yours. Separately the EU is a large collection of states and each one has its varying levels of participation and sophistication with payment processing. Apple and Google Pay are both widely used and that won’t change, and by and large there’s no good reason for Europeans to not accept American credit cards so they’ll continue to do so. Anyone telling you differently either doesn’t have the slightest idea what they’re talking about or they’re just caught up in a pointless anti-American fervor. Even in countries such as France American Express is accepted in more places.
    - lxgr 3mo ago
      Accepting cards from US-controlled schemes is not an issue at all. The geopolitical issue is not having any alternative, and these US schemes being the only way to pay even in domestic transactions. Almost nobody considered this a problem until a few years ago, but the relevant EU stakeholders got pretty rattled recently [1], and my prediction is that this particular bell can't be un-rung. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/law/2026/feb/18/international-criminal-court-icc-judges-trump-sanctions https://www.theguardian.com/law/2026/feb/18/international-cr...
      - graemep 3mo ago
        They are aware of it, but there is so much US dependency that its very difficult to reverse course let along unto what has been done. The EU's age verification app will only work on Google or Apple controlled phones. A lot of payments are done on phones. A lot of other things depend on phones too - my local bus company (in the UK) requires its mobile app for some types of tickets. I have had to use phone based ID verification already.
      - ericmay 3mo ago
        Well it doesn’t matter whether it’s un-rung. Europe can develop payments tech, folks visiting continue to operate like they normally do. The US is increasingly accepting payment mechanisms and cards from other providers too. Continued competition is good here all else being close to equal. Each nation or economic block or alliance or whatever will have to decide which kinds of products and services they’ll want to protect or build in-house. While the EU lambasted the United States when it began taking measures to do what the EU is doing now, it’s encouraging to see the EU change course and start to protect its industries, though who knows how effective that will be. China is looming large over the EU, Germany in particular.
- Kuinox 3mo ago
  I always find it funny that americans think the button to oppose a payement doesn't exists on my banking app because I have a debit card and not a credit card.
  - rpdillon 3mo ago
    It's mostly about who possesses the money. With debit, the money is transferred. With credit, the money is scheduled for transfer, subject to my approval. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possession_is_nine-tenths_of_the_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possession_is_nine-tenths_of_t...
    - lxgr 3mo ago
      This has basically nothing to do with it. A bank deposit is a liability of the bank, and possession is not a useful lens here. What matters are the legal and contractual rights and obligations you have against the card issuer. In the US, these are historically different for credit cards (Fed Regulation Z) and debit cards (Regulation E), but since it's now effectively the same two schemes running it all and imposing their additional liability protections (largely motivated by considerations of brand perception, which would suffer if the same logo sometimes confers weaker protections). The main practical difference nowadays is that in the case of debit cards, you're out your own money for a few days, while with credit cards, the only thing that temporarily suffers is your open-to-buy/line of credit.
      - dmoy 3mo ago
        > The main practical difference nowadays is that in the case of debit cards, you're out your own money for a few days, while with credit cards, the only thing that temporarily suffers is your open-to-buy/line of credit Right, and this is GGP's main point The risk to a debit card user in the US is higher because the money you need to pay your rent or mortgage may temporarily disappear due to fraud, and may take longer to resolve than your deadline with your landlord. When using a credit card, that risk is not on you.
        3mo ago
- raron 3mo ago
  That's interesting argument. Here it is usual to have a daily limit on debit cards. You can not spend more money than that, so a thief can not drain your account. Also many banks give you multiple accounts (you can transfer between them instantly). The debit card is connected to only one of them, so if you keep part of your money on the other account, that couldn't be touched even if the card payment limit has technical issues.
  - margalabargala 3mo ago
    Multiple accounts (both debit and credit) are normal in the US as well, but I have never heard of a debit account here that has a daily spending limit. Sounds like the US and Euro systems work fine within their own borders. Solutions designed for one make less sense in the context of the other.
    - JoeBOFH 3mo ago
      Wells Fargo for the longest time had a daily spending limit on its Check Cards and a daily withdrawal limit. If you had a Debit (not check card) your “spending limit” was your withdrawal limit. If you tried to make a purchase above the spending limit it was a hassle. I am old tho.
    - raron 3mo ago
      It gets interesting when the two system interacts. Friends visiting the US told me that at the POS terminal they had to choose credit card despite paying with a Visa/Mastercard debit card issued by an European bank. By the way, here banks even have daily bank / wire transfer limit that can be changed only by a personal visit to a branch, so even if your online banking credentials are stolen, the attacker can not empty your account.
      - ruszki 3mo ago
        > they had to choose credit card And that doesn’t always work. For example, at a Chevron petrol station in California in the middle of nowhere we tried several European credit and debit cards, and nothing worked. At the end, the guy working there helped us with some prepaid option at the counter. He didn’t believe us until he tried himself that really none of our cards worked. But the situation is way better than 5+ years ago. Back then, almost every second purchase of ours had some problem with our cards in the US. Now, we had like one or two in more than a week. But of course, some car rental companies still pretend that they are generous that they allow debit cards. Not just in the US.
- kyriakos 3mo ago
  Normally you don't have your savings connected to a debit card.
  - margalabargala 3mo ago
    Maybe you don't. In the US it's common for much of one's money to be in a checking account, the same one to which your debit card is effective.
- mrtksn 3mo ago
  Yep, that's why I always used CC and pay in full(until it become much more logical to pay the minimum and accumulate interest that is lower than the inflation). It's much better to be indebted when buying something simply because if something goes wrong its much easier to convince someone to take their thing back when you haven't paid yet than trying to convince someone to send your money back and accept a return.
  - margalabargala 3mo ago
    I've never seen a CC with an APR below 20%, which inflation has never hit in the US. But the logic is sound as long as your income is tracking inflation. Your second paragraph is accurate.
    - mrtksn 3mo ago
      In US, maybe. In Turkey before the general election in 2023 the rates were kept so ridiculously low that you could have taken cash out of your CC and put the money in the savings account in the same bank and make money out of the arbitrage. Everyone did it, having good credit meant license to print free money, IIRC it was %2-%3 per month tax free net profit on the credit you took on your CC limit.
- port11 3mo ago
  The two times someone cloned my credit card were a) while travelling in the US; b) complaints that VISA didn’t refund. So there’s that.
  - lxgr 3mo ago
    Visa isn't a party to your contract with your card issuing bank. Your bank is responsible for filing a dispute, representing it properly, and (according to applicable law and/or as a good business practice for somebody that wants to retain your business) potentially reimbursing you out of pocket if a given transaction has issuing bank fraud liability.
    - port11 3mo ago
      Sure, but the fees I pay for go to Visa for, among others, combatting fraud and credit card cloning. I filled up my bank’s paperwork, I don’t know the inner details of their relationship with Visa.
- expedition32 3mo ago
  The solution is not to misuse your card. Don't do business with shady companies- problem solved.
  - margalabargala 3mo ago
    Unfortunately, the reality is that rather than your card being directly misused by a "shady" company, it's more likely that most companies you transact with do not have perfect security and will suffer a data breach that may expose your payment information.

TFNA 3mo ago

Pretty much all of the EU had Visa- and Mastercard-branded debit cards since the turn of the millennium, so one has been able to buy stuff from the net and travel abroad without use of a credit card for decades now.

margalabargala 3mo ago

As a US-ian I feel exactly that way when using a debit card. A credit card, if misused, can run up your balance and then you dispute, and don't pay anything until it's resolved. A debit card, if misused, can drain your account and leave you penniless until it's resolved.

kevin_thibedeau 3mo ago
The fraud detection of the card processors is effective and they will disable a debit card before that happens. I've always had the money returned automatically the few times I've had one compromised.
- ericmay 3mo ago
  Same fraud systems monitor credit cards except in the American case you get at worst 1% cash back so 1% off the purchase price of everything and if something does happen, and regardless of protections fraud still occurs, it’s the bank’s money that is gone and not yours. Separately the EU is a large collection of states and each one has its varying levels of participation and sophistication with payment processing. Apple and Google Pay are both widely used and that won’t change, and by and large there’s no good reason for Europeans to not accept American credit cards so they’ll continue to do so. Anyone telling you differently either doesn’t have the slightest idea what they’re talking about or they’re just caught up in a pointless anti-American fervor. Even in countries such as France American Express is accepted in more places.
  - lxgr 3mo ago
    Accepting cards from US-controlled schemes is not an issue at all. The geopolitical issue is not having any alternative, and these US schemes being the only way to pay even in domestic transactions. Almost nobody considered this a problem until a few years ago, but the relevant EU stakeholders got pretty rattled recently [1], and my prediction is that this particular bell can't be un-rung. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/law/2026/feb/18/international-criminal-court-icc-judges-trump-sanctions https://www.theguardian.com/law/2026/feb/18/international-cr...
    - graemep 3mo ago
      They are aware of it, but there is so much US dependency that its very difficult to reverse course let along unto what has been done. The EU's age verification app will only work on Google or Apple controlled phones. A lot of payments are done on phones. A lot of other things depend on phones too - my local bus company (in the UK) requires its mobile app for some types of tickets. I have had to use phone based ID verification already.
    - ericmay 3mo ago
      Well it doesn’t matter whether it’s un-rung. Europe can develop payments tech, folks visiting continue to operate like they normally do. The US is increasingly accepting payment mechanisms and cards from other providers too. Continued competition is good here all else being close to equal. Each nation or economic block or alliance or whatever will have to decide which kinds of products and services they’ll want to protect or build in-house. While the EU lambasted the United States when it began taking measures to do what the EU is doing now, it’s encouraging to see the EU change course and start to protect its industries, though who knows how effective that will be. China is looming large over the EU, Germany in particular.
Kuinox 3mo ago
I always find it funny that americans think the button to oppose a payement doesn't exists on my banking app because I have a debit card and not a credit card.
- rpdillon 3mo ago
  It's mostly about who possesses the money. With debit, the money is transferred. With credit, the money is scheduled for transfer, subject to my approval. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possession_is_nine-tenths_of_the_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possession_is_nine-tenths_of_t...
  - lxgr 3mo ago
    This has basically nothing to do with it. A bank deposit is a liability of the bank, and possession is not a useful lens here. What matters are the legal and contractual rights and obligations you have against the card issuer. In the US, these are historically different for credit cards (Fed Regulation Z) and debit cards (Regulation E), but since it's now effectively the same two schemes running it all and imposing their additional liability protections (largely motivated by considerations of brand perception, which would suffer if the same logo sometimes confers weaker protections). The main practical difference nowadays is that in the case of debit cards, you're out your own money for a few days, while with credit cards, the only thing that temporarily suffers is your open-to-buy/line of credit.
    - dmoy 3mo ago
      > The main practical difference nowadays is that in the case of debit cards, you're out your own money for a few days, while with credit cards, the only thing that temporarily suffers is your open-to-buy/line of credit Right, and this is GGP's main point The risk to a debit card user in the US is higher because the money you need to pay your rent or mortgage may temporarily disappear due to fraud, and may take longer to resolve than your deadline with your landlord. When using a credit card, that risk is not on you.
      - 3mo ago
raron 3mo ago
That's interesting argument. Here it is usual to have a daily limit on debit cards. You can not spend more money than that, so a thief can not drain your account. Also many banks give you multiple accounts (you can transfer between them instantly). The debit card is connected to only one of them, so if you keep part of your money on the other account, that couldn't be touched even if the card payment limit has technical issues.
- margalabargala 3mo ago
  Multiple accounts (both debit and credit) are normal in the US as well, but I have never heard of a debit account here that has a daily spending limit. Sounds like the US and Euro systems work fine within their own borders. Solutions designed for one make less sense in the context of the other.
  - JoeBOFH 3mo ago
    Wells Fargo for the longest time had a daily spending limit on its Check Cards and a daily withdrawal limit. If you had a Debit (not check card) your “spending limit” was your withdrawal limit. If you tried to make a purchase above the spending limit it was a hassle. I am old tho.
  - raron 3mo ago
    It gets interesting when the two system interacts. Friends visiting the US told me that at the POS terminal they had to choose credit card despite paying with a Visa/Mastercard debit card issued by an European bank. By the way, here banks even have daily bank / wire transfer limit that can be changed only by a personal visit to a branch, so even if your online banking credentials are stolen, the attacker can not empty your account.
    - ruszki 3mo ago
      > they had to choose credit card And that doesn’t always work. For example, at a Chevron petrol station in California in the middle of nowhere we tried several European credit and debit cards, and nothing worked. At the end, the guy working there helped us with some prepaid option at the counter. He didn’t believe us until he tried himself that really none of our cards worked. But the situation is way better than 5+ years ago. Back then, almost every second purchase of ours had some problem with our cards in the US. Now, we had like one or two in more than a week. But of course, some car rental companies still pretend that they are generous that they allow debit cards. Not just in the US.
kyriakos 3mo ago
Normally you don't have your savings connected to a debit card.
- margalabargala 3mo ago
  Maybe you don't. In the US it's common for much of one's money to be in a checking account, the same one to which your debit card is effective.
mrtksn 3mo ago
Yep, that's why I always used CC and pay in full(until it become much more logical to pay the minimum and accumulate interest that is lower than the inflation). It's much better to be indebted when buying something simply because if something goes wrong its much easier to convince someone to take their thing back when you haven't paid yet than trying to convince someone to send your money back and accept a return.
- margalabargala 3mo ago
  I've never seen a CC with an APR below 20%, which inflation has never hit in the US. But the logic is sound as long as your income is tracking inflation. Your second paragraph is accurate.
  - mrtksn 3mo ago
    In US, maybe. In Turkey before the general election in 2023 the rates were kept so ridiculously low that you could have taken cash out of your CC and put the money in the savings account in the same bank and make money out of the arbitrage. Everyone did it, having good credit meant license to print free money, IIRC it was %2-%3 per month tax free net profit on the credit you took on your CC limit.
port11 3mo ago
The two times someone cloned my credit card were a) while travelling in the US; b) complaints that VISA didn’t refund. So there’s that.
- lxgr 3mo ago
  Visa isn't a party to your contract with your card issuing bank. Your bank is responsible for filing a dispute, representing it properly, and (according to applicable law and/or as a good business practice for somebody that wants to retain your business) potentially reimbursing you out of pocket if a given transaction has issuing bank fraud liability.
  - port11 3mo ago
    Sure, but the fees I pay for go to Visa for, among others, combatting fraud and credit card cloning. I filled up my bank’s paperwork, I don’t know the inner details of their relationship with Visa.
expedition32 3mo ago
The solution is not to misuse your card. Don't do business with shady companies- problem solved.
- margalabargala 3mo ago
  Unfortunately, the reality is that rather than your card being directly misused by a "shady" company, it's more likely that most companies you transact with do not have perfect security and will suffer a data breach that may expose your payment information.