- For many consumers there isn't sufficient money in the account to settle all the one-time and ongoing transactions they are liable for -- credit cards are giving you a revolving loan, there's risk it will not be repaid, and that risk ends up reflected in processing fees
- For many _businesses_ managing cash flow is existential -- as merchants they want to be paid as quickly as possible, but as B2B customers they want to have 30-60 days to sell the input goods they've purchased so they can pay for them upstream. There is a premium for that flexibility that gets reflected in processing fees.
- For both consumers and merchants, fraud risk is real and while it's the most solvable part of all this it's a real (and costly!) factor today. That risk for fraud gets moved upstream to the networks/acquirers/processors/issuers and that premium shows up in (you guessed it) processing fees.
If you want to switch the world to a debit-based system where economic transactions are limited by cash on hand, I'd argue that's a poorer and less dynamic world than the one we're operating in today.
Payment networks don’t provide credit or any kind of liquidity whatsoever, that entirely provided by the various financial entities that communicate via the payment network. The reason Visa and Mastercard haven’t been easily replaced is simple network effects, nobody wants to integrate with a payment network where there’s nobody to transact with.
There’s nothing special about Mastercard and Visa rails that prevents you recreating all the functionality that the broader ecosystem provides, without Visa and Mastercard. Hell all of that functionality could be provided by exactly the same companies and banks that provide it for Visa and Mastercard networks.
American Express is big in this market - what looks like a normal Amex Business Platinum card can very well be a charge card that needs to be paid in full at the due date every month.
There are minor differences but the big one is no carried balance between months is allowed. Payment in full due each month.
And if you are a $MegaBigCorp customer of them, you can customize even more.
Things have been changing a bit in recent years. Since the "debit" and "credit" nature of the card is now written on them, French folks have started to request "credit" ones for travelling (to rent a car for instance).
My understanding is that for car rental purposes, anything using Visa/MC (and not a national debit network like Visa Debit in the US) will work, it doesn't actually need to be backed by a revolving credit. At a US gas pump, a Frenchie needs to select "credit" even though the card has "debit" written on it. Still, should the clerk refuse the card because it reads "debit" without running it... better have this "credit"-labeled one.
Many companies will refuse all debit cards, or all cards with "electronic use only" restriction, at least for the deposit, irrespective of the payment network involved.
It makes much more sense too.
The financial system is built to stimulate that. For example if you'd buy a house you need to pay about 30% in cash and you can't loan that money somewhere else. This way you get people that know how to deal with money. And also the bank doesn't run a big risk if there's a market slump.
In fact just today I read this article in my EU country that sounds almost identical to what this comment describes:
“ If, for example, the payment was made by credit card and the product has not been delivered, the consumer can contact their credit card company directly and request a refund.
Credit card firms can usually refund the money quickly, Beurling-Pomoell noted, whereas consumers who paid by debit card must try to claim their money back from the bankruptcy estate.
"Unfortunately, [reclaiming money from a bankruptcy estate] is usually a very long and difficult process. Consumers are generally in a relatively weak position when a company goes bankrupt," he said.
Beurling-Pomoell added that consumers should always consider using a credit card when purchasing a product that they do not immediately receive.”
Their self-harming has been impressive.
https://www.ft.com/content/837a7b40-f534-11e3-91a8-00144feab...
If your CC is stolen, you are not out all the cash in your account until the dispute is resolved.
If your debit card is stolen, you lose that cash, making it more difficult to pay whatever other obligations you have that period.
Also how would someone misuse it? You need a PIN Code for every transaction anyway, and the EMV Chip can't be cloned like Magstripes.
Online Payments need a mandatory 2 Factor Authentication
But the more concerning fraud is when you purchase something and don't receive what you should have received from the merchant. Whether it is due to outright fraud or not. In these cases you will also have your money reimbursed by your credit or debit card.
But even if it were - most people operate one checking account, and most folks don't keep an especially large balance. If your debit card gets compromised or there is an erroneous charge, it will process up to your balance. It is incumbent on you to notice the fraud and take action. If the bad dip is today, and tomorrow morning my mortgage and other payments bounce or hit overdraft, I have a mess to clean up.
With a credit card, you're typically hitting a larger credit line that isn't fully utilize -- you may not notice the bad charge for a month, but there's no impact to you... the thief stole the bank's money.
This may be what the letter of the law says but this isn't reality. Using debit puts you at greater financial risk.
What how? Surely the US populations credit card debt dorf even the global populations debit card fraud numbers. So while my whole family in a combined 200 years of adulthood have indeed lost some 1000 euro total in fraud, it's not thing compared to the average Americans credit card bills.
I'd rather risk the street criminals with my debit than the suit wearing ones with their credit.
With a credit card, if the card is compromised, its not my money being stolen - its the card issuer's money from my line of credit, and they were planning on settling up with me when my monthly statement closes. I still have to launch a fraud case with the issuer, but critically, _all of my money is still in my bank account_ and I can continue to pay my other bills and obligations as normal.
I think its reasonable to consider giving up that buffer to be additional risk for the debit card approach, setting aside any other advantages or disadvantages between the two.
Just a quick Google... Wells Fargo's policy is 10 days to either case resolution OR provisional credit. I assume that's typical for American banks. For somebody living paycheck to paycheck, 10 days is a long time to go without access to what little cash they might have.
Not to mention the per-purchase (online/in-person) limits, mandatory PIN entry, and daily maximums...
I've never had a web shop use an API to deduct from my bank account - the closest thing is PayPal, which as far as I can tell is basically ACH under the covers, just though an intermediary. Pretty sure more Americans use their CC or debit card for online shopping.
users can even avoid interest if they pay that card off every month
I pay everything with my credit card (bills, stores, online, etc) and pay it off at the end of the month. Even my tap-to-pay is tied to the credit card. I never use my debit card anywhere but an ATM. I have never had my bank account violated but I have had the credit card stolen from a store I visited (card company caught it as there was a bunch of fraud from the same store, they let me know and they proactively replaced my credit card)
I have never had my ATM card compromised as it is for one purpose, the ATM
best part of all is my credit score loves the large payments I always make on my credit card
Yes that's what I'm talking about too, and it's called misuse. Liability is capped at 50€ as I said. We also don't have any fixed overdraft fees, only a compared to credit cards low interest rate, but this would also be the banks problem in this case. Also you still need a pin to pay or 2FA when paying online for European Cards. So that scenario seems very unlikely anyway.
> I have never had my ATM card compromised as it is for one purpose, the ATM but I have had the credit card stolen from a store I visited (card company caught it as there was a bunch of fraud from the same store, they let me know and they proactively replaced my credit card.
I have never had my card compromised, as it only uses the EMV Chip for payments in the civilized world, which you can't clone, and even then you would still need the PIN to pay, or the second Factor. I also never had my Debit card (what you mean with ATM card) compromised, because it's the same thing.
https://svenskforfattningssamling.se/sites/default/files/sfs...
Edit: Page 28 to be precise.
The law explicitly states that funds have to be reimbursed to the victim immediately or at latest on the same bank day.
It’s sort of true in a legal sense, but not a practical one. If you find yourself in a dispute (even outright fraud sometimes) you might end up stuck for weeks or months with your disputed funds frozen.
If you are a highly paid software engineer with considerable assets and transaction volume at your bank it’s likely you will never experience hardship with disputing a transaction. If you are someone scraping by and that $200 depends on you paying rent on time that month you will find your experience to perhaps be different.
I’ve helped friends and family with such disputes in the past. Credit cards even when it “goes wrong” are much better to deal with. Your credit limit being reduced a bit is immaterial to your life most of the time. Having your own money tied up during an investigation that demands more and more paperwork like police reports etc. can be incredibly damaging and if nothing else quite stressful. The experience some of my friends had in these matters is nothing like I had when I had my wallet stolen and I no longer recommend anyone use debit if they can avoid it.
Heck, I had a friend who doesn’t even have a passport dispute an ATM transaction in a country he never visited. The bank initially denied it and it took weeks to eventually get it resolved in his favor.
In the end having the banks money tied up vs your own money at risk is always better if you can handle the responsibility of a credit card.
Was that an introduction to the rest of your comment?
Explain to me please how a dispute with a vendor on a purchase makes a difference for your ability to pay rent? If the purchase was not fraud, then you have used that money anyway with your purchase. Unless you're planning to pay rent by bartering your Amazon order.
If you're instead talking about a stolen or cloned debit card, then that money is refunded usually as soon as you've made a police report and sent it to the bank, which is a matter of two days at most. The paperwork is not difficult, because cards get stolen and cloned all the time.
But the fraud protection is the same, even if procedures and timelines might differ.
This is a uniquely American viewpoint. In most of Europe you don't buy anything on credit ever.
By December 2025, consumer credit in the Euro area alone stood at an estimated €812 billion.
Sure, in Europe people will subscribe to a credit to buy a car or materials to improve their home.
But buying your groceries or lunch with a credit card is quite a rare exception.
Airbnb reservations I also tend to do on credit.
Anything related to company expenses I also do on credit and receive reimbursement prior to having to pay it myself.
The only time I even considered it was to build a credit score in the UK to eventually apply for a mortgage, but even then it's not really necessary.
Not having a credit score isn't necessarily a big problem, as banks use it for context rather than making decisions purely based on it, but I did see some advice online about getting a "credit builder card" [1] (essentially a high interest and low credit limit card) as a way to build up credit history.
I decided that getting in debt just so I can prove I can get out of it is a stupid system, and didn't do it. Last time I checked (with Experian), I had a perfect credit score, so I don't know what happened in the meantime.
1: https://www.experian.co.uk/consumer/credit-cards/types/credi...
From your nickname it sounds like you are from Romania so if that's so there might be a dose of xenofobia included there as well. That is kinda big in the UK right now, the whole Brexit was fuelled by it, sadly, especially concerning eastern Europe. I was on the receiving end of some of it myself too, being called 'a non-national' and eyed with distrust. I'm sorry.
Besides, if you want insurance just get a 30€ per year rolling package.
You could draw all of it and put in a a 2x leveraged SP500 ETF :-D for 3 month and then return the money :-D
The widespread use with "buy now pay later" also counters your wildly baseless claim. Klarna, PayPal 30 days etc.
I'm confused - is it not the issuing bank that gives you the loan, and the credit card company just provides the infrastructure?
Btw. having an overdraft limit of a few hundred Euros is quite typical for those liquidity issues. You don't need a credit card for that.
1. Merchant (bears little fraud risk but a lot of chargeback risk)
2. Payment Gateway (little direct risk but some liability risk)
3. Merchant Acquirer (more direct risk but mostly if merchants become insolvent)
4. Card Network (Visa/MC/AmEx - less risk but significant underlying costs managing a global technology that spans the financial system and needs to be distributed to almost every merchant of any scale in America)
5. Issuers (Banks + AmEx - most risk but get a big share of interchange fees)
I've surely missed something here that the very smart (and increasingly grumpy these days!) HN community will doubtlessly pile-on to correct, so I apologize in advance for errors or omissions... and I bow down if @patio11 swoops in to tell me about the complexity I've missed in either payments or Japanese economic/cultural conventions
Will also add that the benefit of credit is not overdraft but smoothing cash flow... if I'm living paycheck to paycheck and get paid every two weeks, I will incur essential expenses at the beginning of the fortnight that I can afford but lack cash in my account to pay now. I can't overdraft because I won't have the funds to deposit into that account for another two weeks. I'm getting a service that smooths my cashflow and there's a small premium added to reflect that. (Could you save up enough to avoid needing this? Is that a uniquely American way of living? I don't know! I'm making a descriptive claim not a normative one!)
They fought tooth and nail against cash discounts OR credit surcharges and they finally lost. In some areas it's rampant that you get a pretty substantial discount - often 4 or 5%, better than cash-back - and many places post "cash prices".
You can get even more if you're willing to ride the hassle of the gift card train.
The credit card companies know people spend more if they use credit cards, and they turn around and sell that to the merchants.
Credit card companies are allowed to run cashback for using them.
All in the name of "consumer rights": https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/payment-surcharge...
Colorado law recently changed permitting merchants to pass on the actual cost of processing, except for cash, check and debit payments.
https://colorado.public.law/statutes/crs_5-2-212
This law overrides any prior contractual agreements with banks/processing companies that prohibit surcharges. This is previously how MasterCard and VISA coerced merchants into absorbing the processing fee, by contractually requiring credit same as cash pricing.
This is really much less of a thing in Europe, or at the very least in Germany and Spain. Mostly it's the overdraft from banks that you can use as what you call a revolving loan. Most of the visa and mastercards I've had in my life simply debit from my main account.
Neither Visa nor MasterCard are loaning customers their money. It's the European banks that hold the bulk of the risk for European credit card transactions.
Chip and pin and NFC transitions took off much quicker outside the US because merchants generally owned more of the chargeback risk than in the US, and therefore were willing to update their POS equipment accordingly.
Risk (like debt) is another place where a US-centric view will likely lead you to misunderstand the purpose of Visa/MC.
Not really. The risk of all fraud is initial borne by banks issuing the cards, after all they’re only parties that have an actual financial relationship with the person providing the cash/debt. If something which results in that person cash/debt being stolen, it’s between that person and their bank to figure out who’s liable for the lost money. Chargebacks are just a mechanism for banks to recover some of that lost money, once the liability between the card holder and the bank has been settled.
One of the big reasons why Chip and PIN etc took off outside of the US, is that the US is very accepting of fraud, and charging crazy high interchange rates (up to 10x what they are in Europe) so the cost of fraud is spread over many individuals. Other parts of the world have regulations capping interchange rates, and providing better consumer protection, demanding that banks and payment networks tackle fraud, rather than increase the cost of everything by 1-2% to cover fraud losses.
And the bulk of the fees from credit card transactions goes to the bank(s) since they hold the risk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchange_fee#:~:text=The%20...
Some of the services include: - Consumer Credit - Fraud protection - Payment network - Discount service (rewards, etc) - Concierge services - Rental/Ticketing services - etc
No one is denying the utility of what they have created. The problem is they’ve built monopolistic walled gardens where these are all bundled together which raises overall costs while also prevents competition.
These services can easily be unbundled (for example in India the payment network is open and cost free, so anyone can provide those other services on top of the payment network).
What has made this far more urgent, however, is that these companies are located in the U.S. which has recently leveraged the power these networks have to attack EU citizens for frivolous reasons.
So even if the MC/Visa business model was perfect, it would be foolish for even American allies to rely on them given the actions of the current administration.
Disagree. Credit has its uses, but debit is superior for the vast majority consumer transactions: lower fees, lower risk, instant settlement, easy P2P transfers, and broader accessibility. That we've become used to credit card payment system in the West is largely a historical aberration that needs correcting.
Also, I'm a bit biased since I live in China, but WeChat Pay and Alipay are so far superior to the credit card system that I can hardly find a single redeeming quality in the latter. China was lucky in that it leapfrogged the traditional credit card system since it didn't have that historical baggage.
I lost 3 credit cards INSIDE an airplane (hello AirAsia!). I only realized it when I turned on my phone while queuing at immigration and was bombarded with dozens of "Successful transaction" messages. That's ~30min from stepping off the airplane. When I checked my statements, I saw dozens of physical transactions (swipes/taps) with different merchants in different cities from the airport.
All 3 cards have different PINs. All require a PIN for transactions above ~USD200. Yet the banks rejected my disputes because "it's a physical transaction, so you must be the one doing it." Apparently, they all think I could fly to different cities, buy different items, and fly back to wait in immigration, all in 30 minutes.
https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/nfc-gate-relay-attacks-2026/5...
Their risk is covered multiple ways (as reflected in their profits). You pay an annual fee to have a card. You pay per transaction, you pay for paywave, you pay 21% in interest.
They cover their risk by hitting every possible angle.
Err, no - for _all_ businesses managing cash flow is the _only_ NR 1 crucial thing, because if they dont, they will disappear by tomorrow :)
In the EU, debit cards are pretty common, and largely its a network effect. You need to get terminals that are supported by your payment provider.
A lot of merchant terminals are provided by banks, and frankly they are itching to get a sweet sweet cut of each transaction. Not only the information, but the cut of each transaction. Something like 0.2-1.5% of each transaction. (I'm sure mastercard and visa give them a cut)
For Credit cards, the banks/operator already handle most of the risk, and then pay visa a percentage for the privilege of charging usury like rates
Also bank transfers are easy, instant and free.
> For many _businesses_ managing cash flow is existential -- as merchants they want to be paid as quickly as possible, but as B2B customers they want to have 30-60 days to sell the input goods they've purchased so they can pay for them upstream. There is a premium for that flexibility that gets reflected in processing fees.
Yes those businesses use a bank loan for this, no need for a credit card again.
> If you want to switch the world to a debit-based system where economic transactions are limited by cash on hand, I'd argue that's a poorer and less dynamic world than the one we're operating in today.
Thinking that the world doesn't have credit just because they use debit cards is one of the most idiotic things I've read today
If I take a random loan with the bank and use those funds to do the same purchases using debit, then I'm the one taking the loss.
I think there's plenty of money to back all the activity.
Especially if there are central banks willing to back them
Visa/MC make about 0.1-0.13% of each transaction, not a 1-2%. The rest of the interchange (the vast majority) goes to the issuing bank.
Most Dutch people were unaware of the issue (because Dutch cards worked abroad), and those who were, were fully convinced that it's because Dutch system is objectively better (it wasn't, it was just a separate network). Then in like 2024/2025 Visa and Mastercard finally retired their special V-Pay and Maestro brands, and now most terminals in the Netherlands accept most normal cards.
National banking players did not want to give up their turf. The European Union had to twist their arms to get them to agree to SEPA transfers, instant transfers, etc.
If banking players cannot agree, then regulation (or the threat of regulation) must be used.
I once worked at a company doing payment card personalization (its the company who turn blank smart cards into finalized cards on behalf of banks. They print the customers names, emboss the account number, and program the chip and the magstrip)
Every year they had comprehensive security audits from Visa, Mastercard and Groupe Carte Bleue.
One guy there told me that they did the Groupe Carte Bleue audit first, because its the toughest. If they passed it they were sure to pass the others.
Trump sure has moved the needle on that! We used to pay protection money to the US via this. Now we don't get the protection, so we don't need to pay.
VISA and Mastercard never resolved major technical problems. It's nothing a bank wouldn't already be able to achieve internally from a technological complexity point of view. They didn't invent any of the technologies, they just navigated the political and regulatory hurdles, then leveraged their position for more.
Your comment makes it look like the problems are "just" political or regulatory. These are more often then not the bigger ones.
Technology and some systems could be shared.
There are also business and regulatory problems with regard to international transactions.
I don't know that the problem is sophisticated, but it's certainly complex [1]. It's a bit of both in terms of complexity and defending a moat, which all businesses do, including, and especially European ones.
And companies like Visa, Mastercard, American Express, &c. arose initially from solving a real need. Before these companies came into existence when you traveled you'd have to take cash, or traveler's checks or some other nonsense. Today you can, at least as an American, just walk in to the subway in just about any country and tap to pay. Need a coffee at Mt. Fuji? Easy. Buying a bottle of Calvados in some remote area? Yea just tap to pay with your Mastercard.
> Time to do away with these foreign entities.
You'll never do that. Why? Because at a minimum you want American tourist dollars and Europe isn't going to start issuing European credit cards to Americans or other citizens around the world.
[1] Why is it complex? Well you have to deal with American and European financial regulations, KYC, &c. - you have to vet merchants, you have to run the infrastructure to process transactions, refunds, direct payments from bank accounts to pay for cards, and all of those things. Those are real, genuine business activities that are non-negotiable and while they may seem simple, in practice they are not at all simple.
It could be handled similarly to how tourists in Brazil can now use Brazil's Pix payment system.
One way Brazil handles it is with 3rd party digital wallets that tourists can install on their phones such as Wallbit [1]. Another way is with 3rd party services that let you pay from your own digital wallet or bank app and the service makes the Pix payment [2].
[1] https://www.wallbit.io/en/blog/brazilian-pix-and-a-payment-a...
[2] https://www.pagbrasil.com/lp/pix-for-international-travelers...
Thankfully Americans at least have enough purchasing power that the demand for convenience - just take my money with this card will keep us away from bad solutions in Europe.
Only sucks for the Americans though, I think most people non American countries will be fine with that
(Although you CAN pay with pix at many supermarkets, I'd rate it as rare. Also useable for online payments, but you take the risk in case of fraud, unlike with creditcards)
If you don't have the ability to accept a card at all, that's a different use case.
I think your everyday credit/debit card is still objectively better overall, even moreso for tourists which was the main topic.
Not if you are paid in cash by your employer
We were until this guy joined in!
Hard disagree. Until Covid, many small shops didn't take cards in Europe. Taxis, restaurants, market stalls, even trains were often cash only not that long ago. I in the UK ran accounts in companies that had people travel extensively in Europe. We used to issue travellers with EUR200 for the things that cards couldn't buy. Most shops didn't take Amex due to fees. Americans will either have to bring a compliant card or change some cash at the airport.
I also think you have misjudged the mood. I guarantee there are a large number of people in rural Europe that would be very happy never to meet another American tourist, even if it costs them. Americans can look forward to worse service everywhere. I wouldn't be suprised if some people in rural France refused to let you have the Calvados at all.
If you do not accept Visa and Mastercard you are not going to accept payments from all sorts of travellers (tourists, business people, people from your own country living abroad) either.
> I guarantee there are a large number of people in rural Europe that would be very happy never to meet another American tourist, even if it costs them.
Xenophobic or anti-tourism?
Who all stop in chain hotels, who will accept whatever you bring.
> Xenophobic or anti-tourism?
Anti-American tourism. I would say it is a mainstream opinion in Europe that American tourists are very annoying. Each country has its stereotypes about each other, usually stemming from WW2, but the feelings against American tourists have the wonderful effect of uniting Europe. Then America elected a president that threatened us first with economic sanctions, then war. Perhaps it is a fault in our characters, but we tend to take against people that threaten us with military action.
No, that's pretty much all European hotels actually. Hotels require credit cards for three reasons:
1. Security - if you leave the room a mess or destroyed there's an avenue for recourse.
2. To make more money - having a card on file for "incidentals" increases purchases from hotel guests.
3. Obtain payment - most people don't have the cash laying around to pony up to pay full nightly rates, nor do they have any desire carry thousands of Euros around on their person just to go pay in a large purchase at this conjured up local cash-only inn. It also makes your hotel property an easy target for robbery.
It's strange to me that you're taking such a hard stance over something that is obviously incorrect in order to... make fun of people from around the world who can only afford to stay in chain hotels on vacation?
I usually stay boutique properties which are sometimes, but not always managed by boutique property groups. They take credit cards. Every. Single. Time.
Can you provide the name of a single hotel in Europe that doesn't take credit cards?
It works at the moment, here in France, with Swile (for instance)
Opposed to what America has become.
As for your second paragraph, you seem to be dreaming. Americans are some of the best tourists to deal with, and anybody who works in the tourism sector is happy to receive them.
A few years ago I shut down a website in Poland for someone because people didn't want to pay with cards, they wanted COD. My colleague took a train regularly in the Netherlands a few years back that was cash only. Dutch websites also have to offer whatever the Dutch payment provider is (I forget). Another colleague in rural Spain found that the price they were charged was lower if they paid cash by the exact amount of VAT. In Germany I ran a website that had to allow bank transfer as a payment method because 'companies generally don't have credit cards' according to the locals. Up until Covid travellers from our office to France and Germany always needed to use a few Euros. Up until Covid it was an absolute taboo to buy drinks with a card in the UK and Ireland, unless it was with a meal. My local chip shop is cash only today, but none of them had a machine before Covid. My local Chinese restaurant tells everyone the card machine is dodgy to see if they will pay cash. They only installed it during Covid.
I think we will manage without Visa just fine.
> and anybody who works in the tourism sector is happy to receive them.
Of course they are! That is literally their job. It is everyone else that has a problem with them.
As for your run-ins with card hostile businesses and people, you have the option to make your purchases with businesses who accept cards. Most customers choose that options, because cards offer the best protection and convenience for the customer. To the tune of the endless teeth grinding of some small business owners who think that their low profits are to blame on a tiny merchant fee.
Those are partially or completely taken over not by the card network but by the bank that is issuing you the card, so a change in the underlying technology will be transparent.
The reality is more complicated.
I have had Visa or Mastercard being refused in other countries by some retail outlets / institutions.
In fact I never travel with only one card from a single bank because I always want to have a backup. And it is not really Visa vs Mastercard because I have had occurences of having 2 Visas, one of which would work and another would not on a specific shop for no obvious nor documented reason.
Is that really true? I remember wanting to buy a train ticket at Charles De Gaulle airport, and the machine only took French credit cards. That was around 2010, so I don't know if something changed.
The wonderful French train company wouldn't refund the ticket either and instead insisted that we might use it one day on another trip to France. Thankfully by the time I got to the front of the line to chat in broken French to the ticket administrator, I had already accepted my fate after hearing a number of tourists (not Americans mind you) yell and stomp their feet uselessly in hopes of obtaining a refund.
[1] That was a fun adventure too. At CDG, well I found out later that taxis are "allowed" and are the same price as the Uber ride and so we could have avoided this by just taking a taxi through Uber, but a group of folks from Great Britain were ahead of me in line and I came across them later when looking for where to get a taxi/Uber. There were rideshare signs or something but they didn't lead anywhere that made sense. They seemed rather aspirational. Well, one of the members of the British group spoke good French (or good enough) and found out the secret spot to go after chatting with an airport employee I think it's at Terminal E (someone else may know for sure) or something and so my wife and I befriended the same British group and went along with them for the long walk over.
We were able to get a ride, though not cheap. Of course the bus was an option and we're no stranger, but we were on vacation and the $50 ride was just chalked up to the cost of doing business. We were already 2 hours behind schedule because of the train fiasco.
All that to say, I think using an American credit card these days is the least of your concerns. I was surprised to see American Express taken rather much more widely than anticipated. Be careful getting gas though as they place holds on your card for $250 or something like that, and once you get enough holds you can't get any more until the prior ones "roll off".
Had to use debit.
Even more surprisingly to me - a pretty decent chunk of businesses even would accept AmEx. By no means all, but I recall it being basically nonexistent not that long ago.
And to be clear - much of my time was not in areas that get a ton of foreign tourist visitors.
Not saying your experience didn't happen, but given our very different experiences it might be something with your particular bank/issuer/card?
I was slow to try it and it’s great.
There's still an ongoing trick that some European businesses do where they'll try and get you to pay in dollars because they can arbitrarily set the exchange rate. It's obviously within "reason" but on the higher end for no purpose other than to make extra money. I find such behavior to be dishonest and deplorable.
And people do underestimate the complexity of it
It wouldn't be hacker news without a comment like this. I haven't personally worked in finance, but I've had a lot of friends do it.
It _absolutely_ is complicated. It's not too complicated for a nation or the EU to do it in house, but no, there's a bit more there than "Claude make me a ledger"
Regulation changes "why bother" to "oh crap".
This is the central power lever of the EU and one that is frequently underestimated.
European power projection doesn't work through tanks and aircraft carriers. It works with regulations, trade deals and economic incentives. Remember how a few years ago everyone was scrambling to get GDPR-compliant? That wasn't some random event. That was the EU projecting power.
Why do iPhones have USB-C now? European soft power.
Why are things like Champagne and Prosciutto di Parma protected brands that can only be sold if they're from the actual region? And I mean not just in Europe itself, but everywhere it has deals? Canada, Japan, India, China, Mercosur, etc etc? European soft power.
The EU is playing a different game from the other major players. Not one of brute force, but one of shifting the foundational rules of commerce in their favor. And they're very good at it.
I suspect there's quite a few other things you have to consider when you're managing trillions of dollars of transactions a year. Fraud, settlement times, up times, security, customer service, debt collection, interest rate calculation, reach, KYC, record keeping, legal inquiries.
But I'm sure we're just a couple grok comments away from a competitor
Roughly nobody argues that part is difficult.
> It's not complicated.
It's very complicated, for the reasons that all complex real world systems are. It's an absolute mess.
> Time to do away with these foreign entities.
I don't really mind the "foreign" part, but it's fairly wild that essential financial infrastructure is privatized, so let's!
Hence why crypto hasn't taken off with merchants. Because who's going to pay for merchants to change their point-of-sale systems to accept a new payment method.
Knowing the card will always work 24/7/365 with such a high degree of assurance is a non-zero factor in how well a consumer economy performs.
1. Debit Mastercard/VISA. These are Debit Cards that use the Mastercard/VISA communication system to process transactions. While they are not "Credit" cards because you are using cash in an account that is your money, they rely upon the VISA/Mastercard system and merchants will be charged the Mastercard/VISA fee like a Credit Card.
2. Interac Debit Card. Interac was the first company to offer a debit card type system in Canada, and they are the traditional bank card. These cards use the Interac system (so does eTransfer) and Merchants are charged by Interac for using the system. Its typically less than Mastercard/VISA, which is why you see these "Debit Card only" signs.
3. Mastercard/VISA and Interac hybrid cards. These are newer and combine both Mastercard/VISA and Interac cards in one. The merchant can choose how they want to proceed.
Most of these "Debit" only signs are really saying "Interac only", but because for 30 years Interac was the only provider of Debit cards in Canada, it became the common vernacular to say "Debit" when you mean "Interac".
It’s about the cost of another employee in salary per year for restaurants.
While many other countries employ pay by QR code which is free.
Now most merchants have to work with two companies, visa and mastercard. Want to accept russian MIR cards? Well, in some countries you're not allowed to, and in some, you must, since visa and mastercard don't work there. Now if you add a european company to the mix... whill their cards get accepted in south africa? What about in eg turkey? China? Will whatever indian alternative is get accepted in france?
Currently, with a visa and mastercard, except for maybe russia and iran, you're pretty sure it'll get accepted at least somewhere in any urban area you visit, so you won't be hungry and have somewhere to sleep. If my bank replaces my mastercard with the EU alternative, I won't be that confident about that for quite a few years.
On the other hand, cash is still the king of everything everywhere... somehow some politicians are trying to get rid of that for some reason.
Diners club? Well.. "it depends". Many don't work with it.
Indian, russian, chinese, cards? Maybe in india, russia and china, but you shouldn't expect it to work "everywhere" like visa and mastercard. Same will be true for EU cards for quite a few years, especially if the system gets fragmented into many different companies using many different systems, and you'll always wonder if your german card will get accepted in Algeria like your friends' french card is.
Thankfully, this use case has been solved by Russians themselves.
Just dealing with fraud is a major problem in itself.