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Comment by traceroute66 | Hacker News Reader

> Many non-US countries have little/no credit card presence

Was that statement accidental horrible wording or did you actually mean it ?

If the latter, then you must be one of those many Americans that needs to travel more. The rest of the world are not neanderthals who've never heard of credit cards.

Go to Kenya (Africa) and the only reason you might struggle to pay by credit card is if the merchant has decided to prefer payments via the M-PESA money transfer phone app instead which is what most of the locals use. So you could say a number of non-US countries are even ahead of the US !

But of course I hope your wording was accidental, in which case I apologise for the three paragraphs above. ;-)

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Dunno, in a lot of europe, though credit cards are readily available, most of my family (I have relatives in Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia) doesn't have or want them. They have forms of payment which are strange to me but basically are some form of bank debit card, accepted everywhere. Or fancy phone / app payment methods we can only dream of here.

I didn't read the OP as necessarily implying technical or cultural superiority; credit cards are big in US and may or may not be big somewhere else, as you point out as well, so I felt the quoted statement is quite plainly factual rather than layered with hidden or interpreted meanings...

How do you know what cards your relatives in other countries have?

I mean, if genuine question, how do you know anything about your family? :)

You talk, you notice when you go shopping together, etc :)

Of course it's a genuine question. I am calling you out. You don't know what cards they have. You have gone shopping with your relatives in 5 different countries within the last year? You know that they haven't gotten new cards or changed their habits since you last saw them? You don't talk about credit cards that often. :)

You make an assumption because of some info at some point in time and think of it as a constant fact. :)

For example, I know my brother had a credit card. Does he still have it? I would have to call him and ask him. :)

When a form on a web-site says CC (Credit Card) I can always pay with my debit card. (Unless you're talking about another sort of debit card that isn't what I call a debit card - "a MasterCard/Visa/etc with no overdraft).

To me it seems like some people use the term "credit card" for any bank card, while some actually mean the "credit" part. While "credit" (non-debit) cards don't seem to be THAT popular in the European part of the world, I think that bank cards are pretty much ubiquitous.

For what it's worth, what you have is a Visa Debit (or Mastercard Debit) card, though the branding on them isn't consistent. Debit cards that can't interop with the Visa/Mastercard networks do exist, I have one .. mostly because I'm lazy and haven't asked for a change.

Dunno how rare they are, I suspect rare, but I can't find any numbers with a quick search.

All of Canada uses debit cards that don't work over the credit network. Some banks allow you to request a VISA number that's linked to your chequing account (for online use only), but debit cards use the separate Interac system.

Interesting. I should have been clear:

I suspect debit-only cards are rare in the US. Outside the US: No clue at all.

I have heard debit-only cards in the US referred to as "ATM cards" occasionally, but that was a few years ago. I think if an account belongs to a minor child, it may not be possible to get a regular debit card (that also works with the credit card network), but an ATM card may be possible? That's the only reason I'm aware of to get one.

Yes, there's a different kind of debit card. I usually use a different term that's country-specific (like the cards themselves).

For Germany, a German debit card (the "other sort", as you put it) isn’t the same as any other. It doesn’t have Visa or MasterCard co-branding like other countries’ debit cards, nor a 16 digit number, so it can’t be used online. I might also use the term "bank card" for this, because there are actual debit cards with Visa/MC co-branding which are available in Germany, but less common than other types.

It's also common for Germans to use "Kreditkarte" to mean anything with Visa/MC co-branding, which probably spills over into English. This also leads to the hilarious term "echte Kreditkarten" (real credit cards) for cards that actually have a rolling line of credit attached (these are rarely offered).

However, in the UK I recall that people are usually specific about whether they mean a credit card or a debit card.

There is another debit card here in Germany.

I have such a card and it is neither a MasterCard or Visa card. It looks like a Credit card with a Chip and magnetic stripe, but it has my IBAN on the front instead of a Credit Card number. These cards are the standard here in germany. If you have a german bank account you get one of these.

You can use it pretty much like a Credit Card and you can even pay contactless with it, but I think you can only do so here in Germany. Though it does not work if you only support credit cards.

Since these cards are standard and free some people do not bother with a credit card.

>>When a form on a web-site says CC (Credit Card) I can always pay with my debit card.

Here in Canada, many debit/bank cards now have affiliation with Visa or Mastercard (obvious with a logo in corner), and CAN be used as Credit Cards.

But that hasn't been the case historically - debit/bank card would work on bank's ATM and related Interact/Plus systems. But until semi-recently would NOT work if you accidentally hit "Credit" instead of "Debit" on ATM or retailer's POS system, and would NOT work on websites requiring Credit card - completely different paths. And to my knowledge many bank/debit cards in Canada still cannot serve as credit cards - they just don't have that capability/afiliation baked in.

Note - I speak as a semi-observant customer, I have no systems-based knowledge of these things :-)

We should always be on guard against such things, but is parent's statement really bad?

It didn't imply that other countries are backwards, or that their people are "neanderthals who've never heard of credit cards."

It's a fact that credit cards simply aren't equally popular in all parts of the world and naturally this is something that must be taken into account.

This includes places that are arguably more advanced than the US. Of which there are many many many many.

>which is what most of the locals use

That's the point GP is making. It's not that people can't use credit cards, just don't have one available at the moment they are ready to pay for your product.

Availability and usage is not the same. In Europe credit cards are widely available, but in some countries they are not used for various reasons, it can be cultural (ex: Germany) or bad conditions from the banks (ex: Romania).

In Germany for example, a lot of people have no credit card.

Credit cards are still pretty difficult to get in Colombia and some other countries in South America. You can get them, but you need a long relationship with your bank, and the process is expensive and time consuming for not very much cash back, so most people don't get them.

I am in EU and around me people use credit cards only if America requires it for some reason. I don't even own it.

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