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Comment by SAI_Peregrinus | Hacker News Reader

In the US (and GitHub is a US-designed site) "credit card" is used to generically refer to any payment card, whether it's a credit card, a debit card, a pre-paid universal payment card (not a gift card, but a prepaid Visa or MasterCard or similar).

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Debit cards routinely get rejected in the US even though they can be processed without PIN entry like a normal credit card. The IRS verification system to receive COVID benefits wouldn't allow them. Gas stations can be unreliable. It's a crap shoot. When given the choice I used to select debit to save the merchant money but I've gotten fed up with being screwed over for no good reason to bother anymore.

By you, maybe. The gas station down the street from me, due to fraud, has to make an distinction between credit and debit cards because it doesn't accept credit cards.

That's almost certainly a pretext (credit cards are more expensive) – or they have ancient card processing hardware.

The fraud liability situation is the same for credit and debit cards (i.e. the merchant is not liable for lost/stolen fraud) as long as the terminal has a chip reader.

Lol that's because they don't want to pay interchange fees, not because of fraud. Any decent credit card has 2% cashback/miles. That money has to come from the merchant.

Lol be glad you live in a better neighborhood than mine. Credit cards are off the table due to chargebacks because of how many stolen cards got run.

FYI debit cards with a card network logo also allow chargebacks just like credit cards. So it's extremely unlikely that chargebacks had anything to do with it.

It's fairly common for cheaper gas station networks like ARCO to only accept debit cards because of the fixed fees.

I think it's almost the opposite - (I think) banks started issuing credit cards (with no ability to overdraw) as "debit cards" because it makes them more convenient for online shopping and such.

Not sure why else "debit cards" would suddenly have CVV codes and such.

All cards run through payment networks like Visa and Mastercard, which is why they all have a PAN, CVV, etc. The distinction between credit and debit really just depends on the source of the funds backing the card: either a line of credit, or a bank account that is debited. The allocation of the transaction fee is also usually different, but that tends to be transparent to the customer (and sometimes the merchant).

Banks also charge an outlandish overdraft fee per transaction of something like $35, limited to 3-4 per day. The default for most debit cards AFAIK is to enable overdraft protection. You have to specifically disable it at the bank (which everyone should do). Making an extra $100/day for a few small overdrafts is a very profitable racket.

"Overdraft and NSF fees cost Americans an estimated $15.5 billion in 2019"

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/blog/comparing-over...

Looks like it is maestro which I don't think quite works like that. Looks like Trellmor posted info that explains all of it.

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