Hi, Canadian immigrant to the US. People in the US tend to use debit cards tied to their bank accounts which are also Visa / MasterCard cards. These cards can

Hi, Canadian immigrant to the US. People in the US tend to use debit cards tied to their bank accounts which are also Visa / MasterCard cards. These cards can be swiped as either a debit card (requiring a PIN, similar to Interac) or a credit card (requiring only a signature, or nothing at all in some cases, like a gas pump). They don't force you to use it as a debit card because that would preempt certain transactions, like online ones. (My theory is that this is part of why the US has a far bigger online economy than Canada, beyond simple population density.) Canada also has far stronger central controls on, for example, their banking system than does the US. In the US, such things would be considered onerous government regulation, even if the long term impact was positive. Interac is a Canadian-only thing, BTW.