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Comment by p2t2p | Hacker News Reader

Australian here. Don’t use credit card, setup a separate account for bills, direct debit everything from there, don’t keep anything big on your debit card and use it with Apple Pay everywhere. No fraud, no fees, no complex things and rules to remember.

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Also Australian here. Use a credit card which is set to direct debit (auto pay) the full outstanding balance from a high interest savings account. Credit card is added to and only used through Google Pay.

* Never pay anything in the way of fees or interest, including international fees.

* Never have a positive balance sitting in a transaction account earning zero interest (or as Americans would say, checking account).

* Never worry about overdrawing my transaction account.

* Card authorisations don't deprive me of my own money (eg hotel security bond).

* Importantly, in the event of fraudulent use of the card, the bank wears the damage while an investigation is underway.

A debit card might tick the first item on this list, but not the rest.

Amex pays me over a thousand dollars a year to use my credit card (which it takes from the merchants as fees.) I kinda feel bad about that, but I know those fees are built into the price and if I used cash or debit I’d still be paying the same price, just not get the reward.

But if they accepted lightning payments, I would pay them in BTC.

I used to ask "can you give me a discount if I pay in cash?" and most of the times the merchant would say no. Then I stopped asking and started using only credit cards for at least earning some "rewards" back.

("rewards" purposely in quotes since it's not really a reward, but amex/visa/mastercard want us to think it is - there's no free lunch)

In my country you pay extra (2.5%) at the checkout counter for using a credit card.

In my country that would be illegal. Here, the price is fixed first, and the customer has the right to choose any supported method of payment.

Merchants are free to offer more reward points or discount coupons for cash payments, though.

The proper term for these "rewards" is kickback.

They advertise it as 'paid by merchant fees' but somewhere in a ledge or spreadsheet everyone makes a profit except the individual consumer. Maybe the prices are higher in general, maybe there are some consumers where more value is extracted than from others, but money doesn't appear out of thin air (except when you get into the whole derivatives gamble). Someone, somewhere, gets screwed over when a bank or credit company "gives" you money.

Why would you ever not want to put something on a cc? It's quite literally free money (rewards/points + you can delay payments for a month and pay no interest)

I can't speak for Australia specifically, but most EU countries sharply cap the interchange fees that credit card companies can charge so they don't really have rewards to speak of

There is no free money, and delaying is essentially spending money you don't actually have. If you want to buy something that comes out of your short-term savings account here. Or you can choose to not do that and have all your money in one single account and everything you do goes in and out of that. And you can configure it in a way that disables going negative so you don't get this weird overdraft fee system unless you choose to.

In my country, merchants add a 2.5% fee to every credit card transaction. Cash is king.

Australian here - Points systems are only really worth it in Aus if you're collecting frequent flyer related ones. There are not as many cash-back rewards as the US. We have had a universal fee free bill payment system called Bpay for 20+ years, and paying via cc usually incurs a minor fee. So most households will direct Bpay household bills rather than via credit card.

I don't fly much, so I dont feel the need to harvest points. I dont want my purchasing data picked up by any more companies than necessary (my bank & the vendor), and all the various chargeback and refund facilities offered by credit card companies are a bit less critical as Australia already has stronger consumer protection law around goods fit for purpose & refunds. Credit scores are not really a thing in Australia either, you are assessed on your current ability to service a loan rather your history. Defaults still show up & count against you, but 'building good credit' is again an American concept.

Credit cards are a product designed largely for the American market.

Australia put a cap on interchange fees in 2017 that caused a drop in card rewards. Merchants argued that the lower interchange costs would be passed on to consumers. However, it appears to only significantly affected the consumer rewards.

Free money?

Why spend money you don't have?

If you do have money, why do you need to borrow money you already have?

Because I get 2-5% of it back if I put it on a credit card and pay it off and the end of the month.

> Why spend money you don't have?

Classic mistake, using credit or specifically a credit card does not always mean you dont have the money.

> If you do have money, why do you need to borrow money you already have?

Do you have a mortgage? Do you also have any money in a bank account / savings / cash in your wallet? If so "why do you need to borrow money you already have"?

Indeed the mortgage example is even worse, because typically a morgage has interest paid whereas a credit card paid off within the month does not.

As a matter of principle, I don't accept "gifts" from a bank or financial institution, because there's no such thing.

As a matter of principle I do +EV trades

In Poland I get rewards for using debit cards too, credit cards do not offer anything more in that regard. The rewards offered by bank are the same regardless of which type of card I use. They are in fact based on referral programs (bank gets a small percentage of a transaction if we use their link and they share that earning with us). Debit cards are free and the cheapest CC I can get from my bank is $10/year. And every month I would need to make sure that the CC is paid. There's nothing CC can offer me besides maybe building a credit score.

Rewards/points are not free. You're paying more upfront to get something "free" later on.

Only if it actually costs you more to use the credit card. If not, it's the cash buyers that are paying for your rewards.

What do you mean? I'm not paying anything upfront for using a cc afaik. There are cards with yearly payments of course, but they tend to be marginal.

Same here in Western EU. And if you can't or won't use Apple Pay, any NFC EMV or Pin + Chip EMV will do. Don't combine automation with manual transactions (the direct debit thing), don't put a bunch of value on a thing if you don't have to (both the direct debit thing and the cards) and don't use a credit card or 'overdraft' (or whatever the local equivalent is) features.

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