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I have no love for the payments industry, but this article overstates things a bit. I dropped out when it started ranting about charging credit-card-level fees
by corbet 12y ago
I have no love for the payments industry, but this article overstates things a bit. I dropped out when it started ranting about charging credit-card-level fees for debit cards. There is a reason why those cards are run as credit from an online site - there's no alternative. Have you ever typed a PIN number into a web site? The whole infrastructure is set up to make it impossible (in theory) to capture and store the PIN number; it's supposed to be proof that the card holder was present. That property is not present for arbitrary web sites, so they have to run the cards as credit.
- sleepyhead 12y agoPerhaps in the US. In other parts of the world you can use debit cards online. Far from as common as it should be though. Fees are naturally much lower for such transactions.
- technomancy 12y agoIn the US, you're basically responsible for fraud on your debit purchases (banks often make vague claims otherwise, but it's very hit-or-miss whether they'll back them up), while you are completely protected from fraud on a credit card. So using a debit card with a merchant you don't completely trust is very risky.
- rhino369 12y agoDo you type in your pin?
- M2Ys4U 12y agoUK position here, almost all card transactions use 3-D Secure[0] rather than making the user enter their PIN. I could rant about how bad the 3-D Secure idea is, but that's another discussion entirely. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-D_Secure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-D_Secure
- mtmail 12y agoIn Germany the debit card would be tied to a bank account. In that case you select a different payment method and just type in your (SEPA) bank account number. For VISA debit and credit cards some banks now require online PIN (different from the card PIN) and then send a transaction code to your mobile which you type into the web form.