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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

Credit cards in the USA are backed by very strong consumer protection laws. That is why you can mindlessly give one to wait staff at a restaurant who will disappear with it for an extended amount of time, while in any other country that would be unimaginable. I have also never once cared about credit card skimmers at gas stations or anything of the sort. It's the bank's responsibility to protect the card, not my own.

Consumer culture in general means that it is very profitable for banks and payment processors to hand out credit cards like candy (with huge spending incentives), despite knowing that a ton of people are going to rack up debt that they will never be able to pay.

The overall credit system is also a lot larger than just credit cards. The country runs on cheap debt. Everything from houses, education, cars all the way to TVs and dresses is financed with long-term payments and low single digit interest rates. Most of what people earn goes towards paying for stuff they bought in the past rather than saving for something they might buy later.

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If you want to understand the USA or figure out why something here is the way it is, the answer is usually "because it lets corporations extract the most money out of regular people." Everything, from seemingly odd little cultural quirks to enormous institutions like how we do health care, systems that were deliberately designed and things that emerged organically: everything is the way it is because it optimizes wealth transfer from ordinary people to corporations. That's usually the most straightforward explanation.

I wish more people realized this.

A little bit off-topic: If you want an explanation in Germany what things are the way they are, it's often because "otherwise the insurance wouldn't pay in worst case".

Giving loans is a good thing. With them, as the comment above yours points out, people finance education, cars, and homes that they can afford to pay off later due to having a higher salary than before.

Predatory loans are bad and governments do try to crack down on those. Going from "it's easy to get credit in the US" to "the US lets corporations steal from regular people" is a bit much.

I somewhat agree with what you said, but I think you sidestepped the intriguing question of why so many people in US seem to use credit.

time value of money and capital gains tax make it less efficient to pay cash for large purchases. why don't people in the rest of the world use credit?

Money now is worth more than money later, why is that a hard concept to understand?

For one, I've never felt that way. If I were a business, that might be different.

would you be indifferent to whether your employer paid you at the end of a pay period versus six months later?

Fair point.

That’s why you’ve never felt that way.

I don't know what you mean.

I don't think I sidestepped it. People use credit to better themselves because they can. Maybe you are asking why more capital is available to lend and I think that's a good question.

On the other hand, the abundance of credit has driven up the prices of education, cars, homes, etc.

Car prices in America are among the lowest in the developed world though. It’s difficult to compare education as you’re getting a wildly different product depending on what specific university you go to.

They pretty much have to be. The infrastructure of the US is such that if cars cost what they do in Europe then a massive section of the population would be entirely locked out of the economy unable to hold a job.

When people need something, prices tend to go up, not down.

You've got this backwards.

1. The average American is considerably wealthier than the average European.

2. Cars are so expensive in Europe relative to America due to regulations/taxes/etc which are applied by governments (the alleged protectors of the people's welfare).

3. You've got causation backwards in regards to infrastructure, the US infrastructure is the way it is BECAUSE cars are cheaper, cars aren't cheap due to the needs of infrastructure.

Giving loans with 0 interest is a good thing, however, giving loans with anything above 0% interest ins a terrible thing. We've known this for literally thousands of years.

If you're willing to give me an interest-free loan then I will take it and invest it in an index. Generally speaking, discounted loans are only available from governments or friends for specific purposes like education or health when they want to invest in people. Even then you still have people taking advantage because money is fungible. It's hard to do this in a sustainable manner.

The premise is that the economy must not be based on loans, it's not sustainable as we are seeing today (not to mention it's parasitic). Loans are given out for charity purposes. If you want to invest your money, there are many moral ways.

Id rather take a 30 year mortgage out at 4.5% and invest it elsewhere as 4.5% is less than my expected return.

And mortgage rates are much lower than that now too, <3% is quite realistic

I recently heard Denmark has negative mortgage rates for natural born citizens. Losing money if you don't take it.

There is something wrong about punishing people who don't want loans, however. And making it necessary to have or use credit card, so that you build up your credit score in a maze of rule, despite you consistently being able to pay with debit card or cash is exactly that.

They aren't being punished by not using credit cards, they're just choosing not to avail themselves of the benefits of using credit cards.

If you pay your bill every month, then a credit card is like a debit card plus benefits like up to 20% of the purchase value in points, not to mention benefiting from the time value of money.

Credit score matters for whole host of things like when you want to buy a house. So yes, you are penalized for not having it.

> benefiting from the time value of money

This is just nonsense. There is no additional gain from waiting till end of month till you pay.

I'm sorry, my post must have given the impression that I was talking about credit scores instead of credit cards, which is what I was talking about.

As for your other point, if there were no benefit from floating money for 2 months, then there'd be no benefit from doing that an indefinite number of times, which conflicts with the time value of money, an established, mathematically basic concept.

That’s a very cynical view and not accurate.

Having lived in other countries, I actually missed the benefits that robust competition drives. Consumers in some countries are paying fees that went away 20+ years ago in the US.

And as grandparent says, the robust protections offered in the US are a huge plus to consumers. In other countries they aren’t so generous as to forgive fraud and the like.

> Credit cards in the USA are backed by very strong consumer protection laws. That is why you can mindlessly give one to wait staff at a restaurant who will disappear with it for an extended amount of time, while in any other country that would be unimaginable.

But how is this specific to "credit" cards? Don't debit cards get the same protection? The point here is that in the US one needs to have "credit history" in order to do things like rent an apartment, which is not a thing in the EU.

As to security, the EU has largely gotten around the problem by implementing modern payment systems. In Poland no waiter will "disappear" with your card, they will bring a mobile terminal to the table, so that you can use your (contactless) card.

In fact, living in Poland currently, I can't remember the last time I used a physical card anywhere. For the last two years or so I've only been carrying my phone with me, no wallet at all.

There is a very strong, very simple alignment of incentives that you'd think shouldn't really matter, but makes a huge difference: with credit, the burden is on the bank to collect money from you.

In the US debit cards work completely differently than CCs. In the event of fraud, the debit card holder is technically responsible for any losses. Your bank might step in to deal with that, or they might not.

With a credit card company it's always the card issuing company's problem to address.

> In the US debit cards work completely differently than CCs. In the event of fraud, the debit card holder is technically responsible for any losses

That seems very backward. And as you might suppose, really isn't the case in the EU. Fraud is fraud, and it might take time, but you'll get your money back.

The US is all about risk, money, and power transfer. Maybe everywhere is but I've only lived in the US.

In the case of of CCs, there is an assumption that a certain portion of people will take high interest credit offered by the cards and that they will incur interest and have to pay that. The rates are often incredibly high, something like 20%+. To encourage more people to use these cards to increase the population and likihood people will be forced to pay these interests, CC companies offer incentives like cash back, no-interest periods to encourage borrowing behavior or misunderstanding of the boundary time for payments for at least one hefty interest payment, etc. They also offer an alternative to people who have difficulty receiving a loan for some item any other way.

Debit cards on the other hand are offered by traditional banks. Many of these are free and associated with free or nearly free accounts (usually requiring your regular income deposited or a minimum balance they can invest elsewhere while you let it sit idle). Banks are not incentivized for you to spend money. It's in their interest for your money to sit in your account theyre investing elsewhere or for them to charge you various service fees. They're less inclined to give you incentives and protections to use these cards.

If consumers get to a point of using credit cards in a responsible manner (essentially more people exploiting their benefits than CC providers exploiting them), you'll see these features and protections slowly peeled away. Many cards used to even offer price protection where if an item changed prices than the price point you purchased at, the CC company would refund you the difference. Obviously enough people took advantage of this vs the pool of people paying high interest that these features slowly peeled away. Time and value limits were introduced and tightened, card providers began to remove these, and now few if any cards provide this. This is one consumer feature/perk that used to exist that no longer exists because the normalized increasingly responsible use of cards by consumers. There are several more (rental protection, road side protection, flight delay protections, and a host of perks). Now you often have to pay a fee for a card that has such perks and need to be sure your spending rates are high enough to warrant the fee.

Payment systems aren't about payment systems and detecting fraud, they're about building complex systems people want to participate in under the assumption the complex system will at large extract wealth from the people using the system, not the other way around. Even something as trivial as just paying for exchange of services/good would be straightforward but it's not, it's gamed to pass risks, extract money, and transfer power.

> It's in their interest for your money to sit in your account theyre investing elsewhere or for them to charge you various service fees.

Generally true, but I have suspected that banks have begun getting payments from the payment processors, however (Mastercard/Visa). Most recent time I created my checking account the bank nearly insisted that I have a debit card although I strongly preferred to have only ATM access with it. Additionally the largest banks have most certainly figured out squeezing fees from people for use of the debit cards.

> it might take time, but you'll get your money back.

And that's really the key difference between credit and debit.

With a debit card, if there is fraud, the money is gone from your checking account. You will get it back, but it will take time, and in the meantime you may be suffering from all kinds of unpleasant effects of having a suddenly and unexpectedly empty checking account.

With a credit card, if there is fraud, you have a debt on the books. You will get it removed, but it will take time, and in the meantime you still have all your money.

> You will get it back, but it will take time, and in the meantime you may be suffering from all kinds of unpleasant effects of having a suddenly and unexpectedly empty checking account.

That's what card limits are for. Even on my high-level Visa Premier card, the limit is 1k per day, and there are also per-transaction and per month limits. I can increase it via my bank's app if i plan on making a big purchase with the card, so IMHO it's a good solution for that problem.

The current solution obviates the additional work requirement of changing credit limits before purchase, so IMHO it's a better solution for that problem.

If you're protected from your credit card being used on a $5,000 purchase, why would you lower the credit limit below that?

I don't use my debit card because I don't want to fight to get my money back, but that doesn't mean you are liable for fraud.

https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0213-lost-or-stolen-cr...

"If someone makes unauthorized transactions with your debit card number, but your card is not lost, you are not liable for those transactions if you report them within 60 days of your statement being sent to you."

No. Debit cards do not get the same protection.

I have never had my credit checked for an apartment.

I too only use my phone for most credit card transactions.

> In fact, living in Poland currently, I can't remember the last time I used a physical card anywhere. For the last two years or so I've only been carrying my phone with me, no wallet at all.

Here in Denmark we recently got an official digital drivers license. You verify your identity with the government issued 2FA system, scan the NFC chip in your (non-expired) passport, and you're golden. The digital license is as valid as the physical license.

Couple this with NFC payment being a requirement anywhere that takes payment, the banks having developed a way of transferring money between accounts in different banks instantly based on just a phone number, and the digital drivers license, there's never a need to have my wallet on me. At the moment I'm not even sure where it is -- it's somewhere in the apartment.

Yes, the same thing exists here. My national id as well as driver's licence are stored on my phone. Forgot to mention it.

Credit cards also have stronger consumer protections than debit cards in several European countries.

e.g.

https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/articles/how-youre-...

> But how is this specific to "credit" cards? Don't debit cards get the same protection?

No, they don't. It gets confusing because many banks do offer protections against debit card fraud, but that's entirely up to the bank and its terms of service (which of course they can change at any moment).

The credit card protections are by regulation, so you can count on them regardless of bank and the banks can't change them.

A debit card is a straight siphon into your bank account. The bank may or may not help in the case of fraud, depending how much they feel like retaining your business.

A credit card is a strong firewall between expenses and your money, both in implementation (it's a separate account after all) and regulation (you're not liable for fraudulent use).

So, in the USA always use credit cards. Avoid debit cards. I try to not have any debit cards (it can't be exploited if it doesn't exist) although lately it has been more difficult since banks insist on sending me debit cards I don't want. So I store them away, will never carry or use them.

> I have also never once cared about credit card skimmers at gas stations or anything of the sort.

As a European I haven't as well. But that's because it's been the safe chip part of the card that's been used all my adult life and not the easily spoofed magnet stripe.

You are confusing a few things here. First, the chip cards are still vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks, which is what the modern intermediate devices now do, even though many still call them "skimmers" out of habit (some are advocating for the similar-sounding "shimmer" to describe these devices).

They are quite effective at stealing from Europeans just as well as they can steal from Americans, except Americans are not on the hook for the stolen funds whereas Europeans are.

Here's a Krebs on Security article that has pics of a shimmer found in Europe in 2015: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/01/atm-shimmers-target-chip...

There was 1.8 Billion in chip card fraud for cards issued in Europe in 2018, with the highest rates of fraud in France and the UK in Europe in 2018, although only 20% is at Point of Sale and 80% is online.

But the real difference vis-a-vis the US and Europe is not chips in cards but the massive epidemic of wholesale identify theft in the U.S. The vast majority (in terms of dollar amounts) of credit fraud in the US is part of identity theft, something the US suffers from due to lack of consistent ID cards and ID card enforcement - and very little todo with chip and pin technology.

The US has 24 B in credit fraud, the majority of which is identity theft, and the largest amounts related to entire bank accounts and fraudulent loans being taken out, lines of credit being issued in someone else's name, etc, and not some illegal transactions stolen at gas stations with intermediate devices.

Chip cards are vastly safer. From the article you linked about shimmer attacks:

“The only way for this attack to be successful is if a [bank card] issuer neglects to check the CVV when authorizing a transaction,”

I'm betting the European cc fraud is mostly from residual magnetic stripes or online forms being used, not the chip usages. Do you have a specific breakdown?

I think you are misreading the article, so let me be clear:

If you enter your card in a compromised device, then you lose control over

1) how many transactions are being made

2) who you are paying

3) how much

Because the chip has no way of asking you for confirmation about the identity and amount of the transaction. There is no secure keypad entry connected to the chip or secure bus going out.

All you have is physical presence. The chip can prove to the input device that it is present, and the input device cam forward that proof to the bank. That is all the chip does. It does not prevent you from paying the wrong person, and it does not prevent you from paying the wrong amount. This is why compromised input devices are created, so that you can be charged the wrong amount and to the wrong party when you think you are buying gas.

The chip only guarantees physical presence. Checking the CVV is only when there is no presence and you are trying to milk the attack into an offline attack rather in addition to the MITM attack. Why are offline attacks also possible? Because vendors want to support online purchases, where there is no physical presence. But that' not the MITM attack I was describing.

Offline (card not present) transactions are a second issue, and indeed they are much larger (80-20) not present:present in terms of card fraud, but you don't need shimmers to conduct card not present fraud, although you can certainly use them for that.

Finally, not verifying CVV is not an abuse of the protocol, it's how you do a card not present transaction, which is also supported in the same payment protocol. It's not some weird form of protocol violation vendors are all mysteriously doing. It is not "doing it wrong".

There's also a reason it's much higher in the UK (I don't know about France) and it's the online component. The UK has long card numbers for debit cards, often usable online with just your credit card number + CVV, similar to how US credit cards work. This is not the case for debit cards in a good number of other European countries.

For example, my Dutch card can only be used physically at an ATM using your PIN, or online by using a payment system like iDEAL for which you need bank login details + password (which is not stored on the card). It does not have a long card number like most US debit/credit cards.

In both the US and EU, credit card fraud is 20% POS and 80% online.

As a European neither have I. Couldn't I just have the bank do a chargeback in case of a bad charge?

Yes. I've made claims with 2 card providers in two different banks in the UK (one was a transaction for a macbook pro in India, the other was a merchant who refused to cancel a recurring payment despite me making multiple attempts to resolve with them). Both cases required a verbal confirmation, and a letter to claim it was fraud and a refund within 5 working days.

> The country runs on cheap debt. Everything from houses, education, cars all the way to TVs and dresses is financed with long-term payments and low single digit interest rates.

Can you point to a few examples of TVs or dresses being financed in the low single digits? I'm genuinely curious -- as an outsider, my impression of US credit was always one of a system that charged predatory interest. That impression is mostly based on seeing credit cards advertised at 15-25% APR, and hearing stories of student loans with interest rates that approached the double digits (for debt that's not dis-chargeable in bankruptcy, no less).

My point of reference are Switzerland and Germany, which have legal caps on interest rates around 10-13%. Credit agreements with higher interest rates are nullified, voiding all interest claims. As a result, the growing rate for unsecured debt is somewhere in the 8-10% region. (And, of course, significantly lower for secured debt, like mortgages or car leases.)

Certainly. There’s many cards that provide promotional 0% interest rates for 12 months. The idea is every 12 months you sign up for one of these cards and you can make minimum payments with no interest, when the card is reaching the end of its promotional period you just pay it off in full and don’t use it anymore unless there’s good rewards.

Ah. I hadn't considered credit card churning. Thanks!

(I do have some reservations -- I'm guessing that only a small minority of cardholders attempt to churn their balance from card to card or pay it off before the end of the promotional period. 12-month lines of credit don't come for free, and if the expected average payoff wasn't worth it, credit card companies would probably stop running these promotions.)

It is 100% free money. The catch is you will be charged all the interest in some cases if you reach the end of the promotional period and haven’t paid off the card in full, or something like that.

This exists in the EU and Switzerland too, look at Klarna. They take 3% of a transaction from the merchant (depends on the country) and charge no interest fees at all for the end user. Even a financially responsible buyer might find it worth paying off later since there is no interest.

Oh, I have no doubt that there are situations where it may make sense to buy things on credit. Houses and cars can often be financed at good conditions. I've yet to see an example where this applies to small purchases.

Klarna offers a variety of payment methods. The 30-day factoring looks fine (3% charged to the merchant, no interest to buyers). But as far as I can tell, any financing they offer beyond 30 days comes with significant interest. Their product page for Ratenkauf [1] says "Es fallen Zinsen an." ("Interest is charged"). When I look at their demo store [2], they indicate a 10.43% APR for a €400 purchase paid over 12 months. This, of course, falls on the right side of the law and has a pretty small risk of ruining people -- still, I don't think there are many scenarios where you'll end up better off after paying 10% interest on anything.

[1] https://www.klarna.com/de/verkaeufer/produkte/ratenkauf/ [2] https://www.klarna.com/demo/de/de-DE/kp/p-sunglasses-de/. You'll have to add the sunglasses to your cart and proceed to checkout.

> very strong consumer protection laws

What if you go bankrupt as a consumer in the US? Credit cards are scarily easy to come by in the US, which suggests to me that credit card issuers aren't worried about consumers potentially unable to pay them off. Which further suggests to me that it's not really the consumers being protected, but rather the credit card companies.

How does consumer bankruptcy work in the US? Raking in a lot of credit card debt, that you cannot afford, could make one liable for life.

> What if you go bankrupt as a consumer in the US

You will have difficulty getting credit for 5-7 years. You may think "fine, I'll just pay as I go" but credit checks are often part of the approval process for an apartment lease, or applying for a job.

I had a property management company tell me they wouldn't rent to me if my credit wasn't good enough even if I paid the entire lease up front

Yes, because you could do more than the value of the lease in damage to the property, and then be so insolvent that there is no way to recover any of the money from you.

I'm not saying I agree with this. Landlords are ridiculously abusive, as a renter you will frequently be asked to pay a $300+ nonrefundable "application fee" before they will show you the lease document. They then can put whatever terms they want into the lease, understanding that many renters would not be able to afford another application fee.

Even if the landlord was willing to rent to you by mitigating the risk in this way; at least in NY state that would not be legal anymore.

The state recently limited security deposits to a single month, and do not permit taking more than one months rent up front. This was meant to help tenants avoid having to come up with more money, but of course landlords will simply mitigate the risk by not renting to some people at all or only for a higher monthly amount.

https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/changes-in-nys-rent-la... "Capping Security Deposits • Landlords can only charge up to one month of rent for a security deposit or “advance payment.” This applies to all residential rentals, with a few exceptions, whether you have a lease or not. › This means that if you are moving into an apartment where the rent is $1500 a month, the most your landlord can charge for a security deposit is $1500. › This also means that your landlord may not charge you in advance for the last month’s rent if you are also paying a security deposit."

> credit checks are often part of the approval process for an apartment lease, or applying for a job.

And then, your country tries to shame China for its "social score".

Which, contrary to popular perception, is not even a monolithic government scheme but a bunch of mostly unrelated initiatives, the best known of which is Alibaba's Sesame.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhima_Credit

There's a pretty broad difference between a system that determines "does this person honor their payment agreements according to the objective metrics of their payment history and credit usage" and a system that determines "is this person a 'good citizen' according to an opaque set of random metrics, many of which are non-financial and defined by the state".

Comparing them directly in this way is not only disingenuous, it indirectly handwaves the objectively oppressive system China runs.

Why are credit checks part of applying for a job? Isn't the employer supposed to pay you?

It may be included as part of a background check. If you need to apply for a security clearance then any debt you have is relevant to that process.

If you are in mountains of debt you would be more vulnerable to embezzlement and bribery. Generally only relevant for security and financial industries

An employer may not want to hire someone to be responsible for company money, when they are not responsible with their own money.

A poor credit file can show you are not organized or responsible.

Actually using much available credit is an indicator of someone in financial hardship who may be more likely to commit fraud or theft.

> credit checks are often part of the approval process for ... applying for a job

Surely that can't be legal?

I cannot understand how this works at restaurants in the US.

Last time I visited it went like this:

1. I get a bill ($50 for example) and give the server my card

2. A card payment notification appears on my phone for the $50 payment with my bank

3. The receipt comes back with a tip field where I write $10 and sign

4. The server now updates the payment and a few days later when the payment clears, the amount has changed to $60

But what if the server chose to enter $20 instead of the $10 I specified? Do I have to keep the receipt and remember to go check that the cleared payment matches a few days later? How else would that be caught?

In the UK, you enter the tip on the card machine when you put your card in, so the payment is immediately taken and everything is clear. I really want to know why I shouldn't worry about the above scenario next time I cross the pond!

It does seem weird. All I can say is that changing the tip amount is rare. I’ve never seen it happen, or perhaps I’ve never noticed.

Additionally, I don’t worry about it thou because my past experience suggests I can reverse the charges if I call the credit card company fairly easily.

One call to your credit card company about the fraudulent charge and it’s resolved. They will do an investigation and the price of the original transaction before the tip will be discovered. Also, the employee who changed the tip amount will likely be fired.

Additionally the whole charge is likely to be reversed (or it has been for me in similar situations) and the business will have to pay a pretty big ($20+) fee. Of course the employee could be a bad actor but it's in the businesses best interest to try to ensure that isn't the case. I think if there are too many chargebacks, the business gets designated as high-risk and will also have to pay more processing fees.

One thing to note about the US is that card processing fees are more than double what they are in the UK/EU. It allows CC companies to eat the costs of fraud more without passing it onto the consumer/business.

Right, so you're saying it up to me to notice and call the credit card company?

In that case, I need to go through my statement and remember that the $70 charge was supposed to be $60, or have the receipts and check it. That isn't something I have to do here, because it all happens at the same time.

Or are you saying that the penalty for the restaurant/server is high enough that this sort of thing just doesn't really happen much?

I've never seen it happen and I use credit cards for everything. I can't remember the last meal in a restaurant that I didn't use a credit card. I've never heard of it happening from any friends or family either. It just isn't a thing.

Same with stealing number. Yes it's kind of strange that most of the time the server just takes your card and disappears for a while, but I've never heard of a number being stolen from anybody I know. Of course, it does happen, but it's very rare.

Here’s the thing man, until you personally see it happen at least once, don’t bother worrying about it. The odds are super slim and the incentives to commit tip fraud on one meal are high risk for little gain. I’ve never seen it happen or heard of it happening.

> But what if the server chose to enter $20 instead of the $10 I specified?

Unless they have complicity with management, the risk over reward is too great to try this. If they kept the skim small to be unnoticed -- $3-5 on each check, perhaps -- it may still not add up to being worthwhile. Most people in the world are not criminal masterminds; I think sometimes engineers like us forget that others are not constantly looking for loopholes in everything. :)

> But what if the server chose to enter $20 instead of the $10 I specified?

Sure, they could. As long as you kept the receipt just show it to the credit card company and they'll reverse it. More importantly, I'd imagine the store would be heavily penalized, up to possibly losing their credit card contract which would leave them unable to accept payments if it's a recurring problem.

So, it doesn't really happen. In decades of eating out a lot, never seen it (and I'm the type who checks every line item in the credit card statement so I'd notice if anything is even a penny off). So no reason to worry about it.

> you enter the tip on the card machine when you put your card in

Personally I hate this so much, because I want to compute the tip and it's really uncomfortable to do so with the waiter staring at me. I want them to go away and give me time and peace to do the calculation.

Yea, it seems to come down to the penalties being high enough that this fraud isn't worth it.

As a software engineer, the idea of writing in my bad handwriting the tip and total and then someone who is probably in a hurry typing it in seems like a way to introduce more human error.

That's much less likely to happen with a terminal and, since most banks here send you instant payment notifications, you're likely to catch it immediately.

Obviously this system is working for billions of payments a year over there so it can't be too much of an issue! Next time I'm there, I'll not worry about it.

It's the same in Sweden. The laws are very beneficial for cc holders.

If you buy something with a cc and the company for snow reason later does not fulfill it's obligations, the bank is liable. If you paid with cash or a debit card, you're on your own.

From what I've seen, it's still different in the US. If you dispute a payment, in the US the bank apparently sides with you most of the time. In Europe bank sides with you only if it was a clear case of not receiving the service/goods, otherwise it's usually considered a valid transaction.

I once had a conversation with a couple friends of friends who did targeting for the credit card industry, figuring out which demographics to send cards to. Their goal was to find people who paid responsibly and spent irresponsibly. If people who pay well weren't irresponsible enough in their spending, incentives would be provided. I'm sure this is even worse now with all the data and data-driven tools available.

> That is why you can mindlessly give one to wait staff at a restaurant who will disappear with it for an extended amount of time, while in any other country that would be unimaginable

What are you talking about? You do realize that credit cards exist everywhere at this point? You think that when someone pays by card in other parts of the world they maintain constant eye contact with their card, lest the person... skim the largely visible number?

Err... yes. That's exactly how they work in the UK - and most other countries I've visited.

The waiter comes to your table, presents you with the EPOS or tablet. You take it and either tap your card, or insert it and type your PIN. Then you hand the terminal back to the waiter.

The card never leaves your hand.

Exactly. I can't even imagine how the US system is meant to work with something like Apple Pay. I don't carry my physical card, there's no need to when it is in my phone.

The take away your card system doesn't work with phone payments. That's one reason why they haven't really taken off in the USA.

A lot of chain restaurants now use tablets to let you pay right at the table, and usually they support contactless payments.

Fast food restaurants have also started accepting contactless payments by and large, although it can be quite awkward in the drive thru.

Not sure why you think that is particular to the USA. Credit cards in every country I know work this way.

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