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Comment by Enginerrrd | Hacker News Reader

Because credit cards offer better protections from fraud making the consumer not liable. Debit transactions don't have that and they are also linked straight to your account so theres also additional risk where if someone steals the money using your debit information it's just gone.

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In Europe they offer the same amount of protection.

Most cards in the US have a Visa or MasterCard logo, and transactions made that way have essentially the same legal protections as credit card transactions, but in the meantime, your money is not in your bank account. So other transactions may fail.

With credit cards, it's the bank's money that's missing, not yours.

I'm in Europe and still use my Amex for everything I can.

It has no membership fee, I get 0.5% cashback which is free money, and one time a merchant failed to deliver an order and they gave me back my money within like 10 minutes of me raising a dispute

If I had used my debit card with my normal bank it would probably take a week to resolve, and I'd be the one out of pocket in the meantime

Even with the same nominal protection, with credit I don't lose anything. With debit the money is missing from my account until the case is resolved.

I know I prefer to only put the bank's money at risk, not my own.

Wouldn't a credit card charge YOU interest on the disputed amount until the case is resolved?

Nope. Also they resolve very quickly and fraud cases generally resolve in favor of the consumer anyway.

This isn’t true yet people repeat it anyway.

From https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/credit-cards/credit-card-...

” For debit card transactions, the Electronic Funds Transfer Act (EFTA) applies. While these laws offer some similar protections, knowing the differences is key to understanding why it's safer to use one type of plastic than the other... According to the EFTA, your potential liability for fraudulent debit card transactions is virtually unlimited. You have up to 60 days to report a lost or stolen card under the EFTA. After that, you simply lose whatever money was taken, even funds siphoned from linked accounts.”

But the people on r/personalfinance told me to never ever buy anything on a debit card because I can't file chargebacks there! /s

You can but while you wait your money is gone, you can't use it. With a credit card it's the bank's money that is missing in the case of fraud or charge back.

Debit issuers are obliged to provisionally credit any disputed amount within at most 10 business days after the cardholder reporting a problem.

That's of course still worse than not being out the money on a credit card, but it's not the dealbreaker many make it out to be, and could easily be amended by regulators if there was any interest in doing anything about the drag on the economy that are inflated card payment fees.

10 days without my money compared to no days without my money?

You mean the same regulators who just rescinded the cap on overdrafts?

Definitely worse, as I already acknowledged, but not as bad as people often make it sound.

And yes, regulations alone aren't enough, they also need to be enforced. That goes for both credit (Reg Z) and debit (Reg E), though.

Exactly.

Debit transactions don't have that

Why not?

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