Not a great solution to constantly have to top up your checking account with some amount between "I need this much to pay my bills" and "losing this amount would devastating" which for many people has quite some overlap

Stay on your own rooftop please. That is a very US only view.

There's nothing wrong with debit cards being used.

If I can shout one thing back up to your rooftop:

Why on earth do your transactions cost 2 or 3 percent. For what? For basically verifying an RFID chip and adding a single entry to a ledger?

Don't say you're getting it back with points or whatever because we all know that the credit card company won't be going broke so that cut is coming from somewhere. And in the end that's always the consumer

Most banks/CU will issue you ATM only card that cannot be used a credit card. Might require some wrangling with the bank.

It's a non existent problem in the US, too. The internet likes to blow things out of proportion, but not only are pretty much all payments made with tap to pay for many years now, even when it was magnetic strip, the incidence rate was miniscule.

Thankfully the US is very slowly catching up. We actually have NFC at most payment terminals already.

Even better, our small town (pop. 100) gas station upgraded their pumps a while back, and they have NFC! Finally my normal fill-up location is skimmer-resistant. Or is it skimmer-proof?

Ah but you see, chip cards were a French invention so obviously the US is going to turn their head from it and pretend it doesn't exist for more than 20 yrs

How so? My card was skimmed and I had only tapped it in maybe a half dozen locations. Never swiped it or inserted it anywhere or used it online.

The key with debit cards is the incentive misalignment. With credit, it’s the bank that loses out, not you. With debit, it’s you. Until the consequences are equaled by legislation, there’s no world where they get equal treatment by the bank

I have a friend that got a call/notification that her card was being used suspiciously. It may not have been from the bank. I'm not sure what exactly happened, but then very shortly after, someone else got her newly issued debit card and then used it at an atm in her area. The bank didn't believe that she wasn't involved. And despite filing a police report and giving them all the information that she could, she was out 2.5 grand, which was a big deal for her. BofA if anyone is wondering.

They might, and it's good they do, but they're not legally required to in quite the same way that they are with credit cards. If someone pulls $10k out of your BofA account, they're completely within their rights to do basically nothing about it.

There is a geographic component. Outside the U.S. acceptance of Discover is not nearly as universal as in the U.S. So much so that in the letter that accompanied the new Discover debit cards they sent out, they had something to the effect of “maybe you should bring a backup card” if you were planning on using it internationally.

No it's actually like asking what cars have to do with debt. You can have a car without going into debt just like how you can have a credit card without debt.

Since you have such high moral standards I hope you don't invest in any index funds because lots of companies in those would probably not live up to your standards

It has been legal for sellers to ask buyers to pay more if they use a credit card for 15 years now.

There is no "moral" quandary. Sellers that have the same price for credit and non credit payment methods are simply betting that people using credit will be more willing to pay higher prices overall and still buy from them compared to their competitors' with lower prices who charge more for credit cards.

Every year, fewer and fewer of my expenses are paid with a credit card because more and more sellers are not betting on this. My kids' gymnastics class/tutoring/daycare charges 3% or more for credit cards. My home wired ISP and mobile network provider charges 5% more for credit cards. My property tax, insurance, water/sewer utility, all charge 3% or more. Even Target charges 5% for credit cards. Basically all tradespeople that come to fix things on my house charge extra and ask for Zelle/Venmo electronic cash payments instead.

So in all these cases, I do not use a credit card to pay. But the point is, it is up to the seller to decide what price they want to charge for credit and non credit, so there is no "moral" quandary for buyers. No one's hand is being forced.

Edit: to respond to comment below due to hitting posting limit, the extra charge does not go to the card issuer, the seller collects the higher price. If I choose to pay with a non credit card payment as a result of the extra charge for credit cards, then the credit card issuer gets nothing.

Whether or not credit card interest rates and terms are usurious or otherwise morally problematic is not a credit card user's moral responsibility. When I use a credit card, I do not ask or enable or incentivize someone else to be taken advantage of.

In your moral dilemma your assertion is that the credit card companies are only making money off of people who aren't paying off their cards each month which must mean that people like me are costing them money by paying off each month. Since I'm costing these evil companies money then don't I have a moral obligation to continue using my credit card?

As for saying that the argument that using credit cards because they have more fraud and security measures is not a good argument because the world should be different is also quite silly and naive since arguments should be made based on how the world currently operates not how you wish it might operate in the future. Life is much easier when you live in reality

> It's a subsidy of the financially illiterate to those who are.

Counterpoint, the financially literate are subsidizing the existence of the financially illiterate via taxes and social programs.

One thing I didn't truly appreciate until my wife and I consolidated our spending and had children - having nearly every expense flow through a credit card puts total spending into perspective without having to look through bank statements or keep up a spreadsheet. Getting a $10k bill when you're expecting $8k (or a $30k bill when you're expecting $20k) can be a pretty jarring event and is a built-in monthly touch point to review budgeting and spending.

It wouldn't be quite the same impact spread out over 5 cards paid out of multiple checking accounts with slightly different billing cycles.

No, credit card companies aren't giving out rewards at a loss. Better cards have a higher interchange rate, ie the merchant pays more fees to accept a good card.

Hence why cash discounts are a thing (and yes they're legal again).

I've heard this, too, and it's a good reason to use a credit card at least for significant purchases. But I'd rather see those same protections extended to debit cards. I wish I understood why they aren't.

Don't you think the 2 to 4% is built into the prices of every merchant that accepts credit cards, big or small?

It's not a great system but it's what we have so using debit instead of credit does mean losing out.

I had this thought as well. I didn't want to raise it myself, because I don't have any personal evidence that this is the case, but of course the "cash back" has to come from somewhere.

Handling cash costs money too though. I know some small business are credit/debit card only since they do not want to deal with the hassle of cash. Out of everywhere I have been, only one place (some grocery chain in SLC) has accepted debit cards but not credit cards.

In some countries they simply outlawed such high fees, merchants pay lower fees and there's no cashback.

> All the stolen money was restored within a few days. It was not a big deal.

You just agreed with my premise but that in your case the dollar amount was low enough to be inconsequential. If someone ran up $5k of charges on your card right before you needed to pay rent/mortgage/whatever, this would have been far more annoying.

Also - credit card protects you from this scenario, for free, or in fact pays you money with any of the cash back cards.

You’re lucky. My colleague had his skimmed at a gas station and his bank froze his funds, causing his mortgage, car loans and other stuff to bounce. Major PITA.

May I ask why you eschew the basically free money that comes from credit card rewards as a responsible credit card user?

The reason is just that it would be more risky, I think. Compare the scenarios:

1. Scammer clones your credit card with a skimmer and pays for $500 of clothes at the mall. You dispute the charges. The funds are actually not given to the store for a bit given that credit transactions take a while to settle. Upon the dispute, the store now needs to prove that you were there and bought those clothes to get their $500, or else the bank/Visa won't pay them.

2. Scammer clones your debit card with a skimmer and pays for $500 of clothes at the mall. You dispute the charges. The store already got paid though. The bank doesn't want to give you another $500 in case you are actually in on the scam, then they'll be out an additional $500. Eventually assuming they can't prove you actually bought the clothes, I think the store would have the $500 confiscated, but usually you're still liable for $50 if you reported it quickly enough, but could be more if you take too long to report the fraud.

Of course debit cards can easily be converted to even easier-to-launder money substitutes, too.