this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
340 points (97.2% liked)
Asklemmy
44170 readers
1405 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I worked at a book store, and the card readers processed everything as credit. Which is generally fine, since most folks' debit cards can be run either way.
I had an old dude come up and pay with his debit card. When it didn't ask for a pin, he started screaming at me about how I'd just illegally charged his credit card. I politely explained that it didn't work that way and he just kept yelling. So I rudely explained that it didn't work that way.
Dude, you think you inserted your debit card and that magically, our system somehow found out your credit card information and charged that instead?
Dude would probably be better iff it it made his debit a credit card.
Debit cards can be run as credit, but they don't have anywhere near the protections of a credit card.
Does it cost the merchant more?
In Australia, debit cards are dual-network, and credit transactions cost far more than debit transactions. Debit uses a local system called EFTPOS that has low fees, whereas credit uses the card issuer's network (Mastercard, Visa, etc) and they take a far larger percentage.
I have no idea, Do debit cards have better protections in australia?
Cause in America, if you run a debit card, you get no protections (edit, banks will generally give you your money back if the card is stolen, after an investigation, nothing else really). I literally have been told by a bank that "If you wanted to make charge backs and have protections, you should have used your credit card"
A lot of people only have debit cards in Australia, and consumer protection is a lot stronger than the USA. Most credit cards in Australia have an annual fee, and the only rewards are usually frequent flyer points, so they're nowhere near as common as in the USA.
I'm Aussie but I've been living in the USA for 10 years. American credit cards are something else. So many good cards with no annual fee, great perks (like extended warranty), and great rewards (like cash back, or points that are worth way more than in Australia).