4 ms·

> It's hard to get a credit card in China. Are you sure? A lot of "credit cards" in China are actually debit cards, where you must deposit money in your accoun

• contingencies 14y ago
  It's probably largely just historical inertia. However, there are also potentially strong reasons to avoid it. 1. China dissuades capital exodus. (They actually have a whole government bureau for this, the Foreign Exchange Management Bureau or 'waihuiguanliju') 2. My recent travels about Southeast Asia suggest that the government-run centralized interbank settlement network 'China Union Pay', is being supported by the government as a regional alternative to the de-facto global defaults Cirrus/Maestro (Mastercard) and Visa (Bank of America). Anyway, the why doesn't matter. It's really the situation.
• masukomi 14y ago
  That assumes that transactions are always processed immediately. This is not the case. Some gas stations, and convenience stores, for example, will wait up to a week before actually charging your card (they frequently just check to see if you have funds available at swipe time). This saves them money on batching charges. As a result it is possible, with a debit card, to run up charges that exceed the available balance. That's why a credit check is required to give out a debit card with a visa / mc symbol on it. So, even in the US, if you have bad enough credit, you may not be able to get a debit card even though in theory you shouldn't be able to charge more than you have. reality != theory