It's mostly about who possesses the money. With debit, the money is transferred. With credit, the money is scheduled for transfer, subject to my approval.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possession_is_nine-tenths_of_t...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possession_is_nine-tenths_of_t...
What matters are the legal and contractual rights and obligations you have against the card issuer. In the US, these are historically different for credit cards (Fed Regulation Z) and debit cards (Regulation E), but since it's now effectively the same two schemes running it all and imposing their additional liability protections (largely motivated by considerations of brand perception, which would suffer if the same logo sometimes confers weaker protections).
The main practical difference nowadays is that in the case of debit cards, you're out your own money for a few days, while with credit cards, the only thing that temporarily suffers is your open-to-buy/line of credit.
Right, and this is GGP's main point
The risk to a debit card user in the US is higher because the money you need to pay your rent or mortgage may temporarily disappear due to fraud, and may take longer to resolve than your deadline with your landlord. When using a credit card, that risk is not on you.
I think the risk is higher in the US compared to Europe because Europe was way faster to roll out chip stuff, whereas in the US it's still somewhat common to have to use the mag stripe.