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Comment by Nursie | Hacker News Reader

This sounds very weird to this european.... but that's probably because fees here are capped at 0.3% and AFAICT there's not really such thing as a cashback card.

(I think they used to exist, just not any more)

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Careful generalising the whole EU on stuff like this. These cards were very common in the UK until the new rules limiting fees were introduced.

It looks like there are still a few: https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/credit-cards/cashback-cred...

I live in the UK, and that's kinda what I mean - since that rule was brought in, such things are basically unheard of.

The most you can get these days seems to be Avios or Amex rewards points.

If you're looking for cashback cards, you may want to look around again on Money Saving Expert. They are definitely available and without a fee. They aren't huge percentages, but if you're only other choice is an airline card and you don't travel enough to make use of the miles, may as well get the cash.

Heck, when MBNA recently lost all it's airline business, the card they switched you to is actually quite decent. A bit of cashback and free Mastercard rate foreign transactions.

> If you're looking for cashback cards, you may want to look around again on Money Saving Expert.

I'm not really, but I did do this earlier. Looks like there are about half a dozen available in the UK, only two appeared to be fee-less, the best one being the ASDA Visa which gave 1%.

They seem to be a rarity these days.

Then it shouldn't "sound really weird", since you know the regulation is fairly recent, that cashback cards existed in the UK, and that America doesn't necessarily have the same regulation.

It sounds really weird to me because it's been quite some time since I've heard such cards advertised at all, I thought they had gone out at least a decade ago.

Some recent rules appear to have caused basically all rewards credit cards in the UK (other than American Express-issued Amex cards with a fee) to be withdrawn from the market - particularly those offering airline miles.

Here in The Netherlands you basically can't use credit cards for offline purchases. Everyone uses the European debit cards with chip/pin. The fees are very low too, it's cheaper to process than cash is.

Conversely in Sweden all debit cards are VISA/MasterCard so credit cards work literally everywhere

Same in the UK.

Debit cards in The Netherlands are almost exclusively MaestroCard, which is why it's so difficult to find a place that accepts credit card. It's also why The Netherlands developed it's own national online payment system - people didn't have a lot of existing options.

In Finland there is no real differences between credit or debit

> Everyone uses the European debit cards with chip/pin

Actually, everyone uses Dutch debit cards with Chip+PIN. Colleagues and I had trouble using debit cards from other EU countries on our last visit.

Maestro/VPay cards should work fine. Debit MasterCard/Visa Debit is the issue.

The problem is every UK bank or fintech prepaid is either Visa debit or MasterCard debit. maestro only exists on some kid cards 16-18yr old limit.

Ah, I see, but VPay is SEPA (Euros only), so the people I was travelling with, from Britain, Denmark, Sweden were out of luck.

Really? I spent a week there recently and used my US Visa card widely.

The supermarkets process the transactions as cash on the credit card. I paid something like 5% in fees because of that (on a UK VISA card, about 15 years ago).

Are the fees also capped for foreign cards?

I spend significant amounts of time in Europe each year (multiple months) and some of my US credit cards don't charge foreign transaction fees and also earn cashback on transactions done in Europe. I'm wondering who is losing money here - the merchant or the card issuer?

The cap only applies to European debit and credit cards used at an European merchant. It also doesn‘t apply to business cards or three-party schemes like AmEx or Diners (unless they‘re co-branded, due to a recent court ruling).

Based on this, I believe it‘she merchant who‘s picking up the tab here.

Most credit cards in the UK offer cashback cards, at least amex does.

I am not aware that fees are caped. In fact last time I checked the fees from payment processors (like barclaycard) for a transaction online was in the region of 5%.

Interchange fees are capped, but the fees your payment processor charge you are not - it’s just that the payment processor makes more money now. (If you’re not a risky customer, you should be able to get that way down now.) However, Amex until recently qualified for an exemption from those caps, hence being able to provide a useful cashback scheme.

> Most credit cards in the UK offer cashback cards

Not many AFAICT, and of those that do it's not a lot (Amex platinum have a 5% intro offer, but it falls back to 1% after three months).

Plus most of them seem to have annual fees. Weirdly enough the best one appears to be an ASDA credit card which gives 1% and has no fee.

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