(Frame of reference: US only) That's a shame, given 18-25 is just the age where a credit card skimmer or online card fraud causing a big fraudulent withdrawal from your checking account, and weeks of waiting to get it back, could be devastating. This has happened to people in my family (likely from gas stations) but we only use credit cards except to pull cash from ATMs, so we only suffer a temporary dip in our available credit line while they investigate and do not have to pay the disputed charges in the meantime.

I know people with terrible credit may have problems getting a credit card, and others may have trouble not treating a credit line as spendable beyond their means, but everyone else should keep the 'debit card' at home or at least confined to their wallet.

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thegrim000 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's extremely common advice to not keep large sums of cash sitting in your checking account. With capital one (and others) you can just open a free savings account, keep the bulk in there (if you don't want to invest it instead), which earns an actual interest, and then there's never a "big" amount of vulnerable cash sitting in your checking account. There's free/instant transfers between savings and checking when you need to move more into your checking.

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pants2 13 hours ago | parent [-]

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

	▲	pitaj 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You can pay bills from your savings account with ACH in the US.

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silisili 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I wish I could scream this from the rooftops. People should keep their debit cards locked/frozen, and only use them to get money from ATMs when needed.

All other spending should go onto credit cards, for numerous reasons that have been bought up throughout this thread.

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hvb2 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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

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silisili 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Of course it's a US view. It's a US site and the OP even prefaced it as such. Does every reply need to do the same?

Retailers(in the US) typically eat the cost. Some industries(in the US), like gun shops, are up front about charging more for credit card payments. Most companies(in the US) just see it as cost of doing business.

Points have next to nothing to do with why you should always use credit cards(in the US). There are legal consumer protection reasons. The points are just an optional perk.

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hvb2 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> Retailers(in the US) typically eat the cost

This is what I really have a problem with. It feels so incomprehensible to me that, assuming you're an adult, you can think this.

It's just a cost, if that cost didn't exist then either the price would be lower or the margin would be higher. In the end you're paying for it. You're the one exchanging money for a good/service.

This is proven by your other comment about how some sectors give you the option. I would rather have that option because those legal protections are useless for the majority of purchases. Good luck disputing that burrito you bought or those groceries. In such transactions you're basically just inviting a company to take a cut for 0 added benefit (aside from points).

	▲	silisili 33 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		That's a fair argument, and if all companies decided to pass the costs directly on to the user at checkout time, the conversation/advice would probably be a lot different. For whatever reason most do not, so it's advantageous to use the one with better legal protections. It's not only about purchase protection/disputes, but liability and timelines when/if someone steals your card info and makes a bunch of fraudulent charges. The more places you use a card, the higher the chance that info will get skimmed or stolen. Luckily, while behind, most places in the US have moved to tap to pay which helps a lot with POS skimming. But it only takes one bad employee to photo or copy your card info, or one poorly configured webstore, to leak your information and use it for online purchases. My most recent credit card doesn't even have numbers or an expiration printed on it, for that reason.

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stackskipton 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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

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elzbardico 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Really, this is a non-existing problem in most places outside the US. Are you still using magnetic stripes?????

	▲	lotsofpulp 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		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.

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tecleandor 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's way less common in Europe. Most places are chip and pin or NFC and that limits skimming quite a lot.

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BenjiWiebe 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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?

	▲	consp 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Or is it skimmer-proof? Put a reader with a shield on the pad and a new pad on top and a small terminal in somewhere out of sight. You won't know the difference. Requires infrastructure though so it is a bit more complicated and a lot more noticeable. Likely used the non-pin entry limit which is always reset after you payed a large amount and had to enter your pin. Not like the strip readers of olden days. Anecdote: We had a "chip charge" system where you put money in your card via a ATM like device and those sometimes had strange "extensions" in front of it which read your chip while you charged it and immediately took the money. People often don't know what too look for when it comes to skimming devices and with tech it may look like a strange but genuine device.

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raverbashing 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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

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what 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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.

	▲	margalabargala 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Maybe you waved it in front of a hidden camera?

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reaperducer 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

fraudulent withdrawal from your checking account, and weeks of waiting to get it back

I've had this happen to me twice in about 25 years. Neither bank made me wait weeks.

The most recent one (with a giant megabank) issued a provisional credit in under an hour.

There seem to be a lot of people in this thread who have never actually been through this and are just apeing what other people say online.

U.S. banks largely give debit cards the same protections as credit cards for at least the last 15 years.

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SOLAR_FIELDS 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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

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maest 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

With credit, it's the merchant who loses out. They get bullied by the credit card provider to eat losses.

Relatedly, the credit card system is truly a tragedy of the commons situation.

It's a ~2% drag on the economy for what? For some silly points with constrained value and an excuse to not build better financial infrastructure.

The frustrating thing is that, given the current equilibrium, you're a sucker for not using a credit card - you end up subsidising those who do.

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testaccount28 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

it's transaction fraud insurance. like any insurance, you pay a small amount regularly, and in return get protection in case of large sporadic loss.

points are just premiums: some insurance consumers are a greater risk, and so pay more.

any convenience features are built on top of the insurance product: _because_ all players are covered, _therefore_ i can make online purchases. _since_ (i have a justified expectation that) i am not liable for fraudulent use of my account number, _therefore_ i can read it to a customer service rep over the phone.

we can of course debate whether 2% is a good price for this coverage! but there must be some price paid here -- if the insurance broker doesn't collect it, the scammers will. this, after all, is the real tragedy.

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vl 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What 2% drag? Aren't you using credit card with 2% bonus? Just see it as 2% reduction in prices.

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hvb2 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

My friend, as a rule of thumb, every additional player im a transaction takes a cut.

So assuming the rest is all the same, you just paid exactly what you would've paid with a debit card. Because the merchant had to raise prices to accommodate the fee. And that's with the credit card company not taking a cut and we all know that's not true.

	▲	lotsofpulp 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The merchant chose to not offer a lower debit card / cash price because the merchant bets that people will pay a higher price if they use credit cards, so the merchant incentivizes credit card usage by asking for the same price for credit card and non credit card payment. There are merchants that do not do this, such as Target, which charges 5% to use a credit card. Insurers/tutors/daycares/schools/healthcare providers/contractors/gas stations/restaurants/governments/utilities are also known to frequently charge more for credit card payments. Any seller can choose to offer a lower price for debit card / ACH / Zelle payments if they want to.

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maest 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Even ignoring the cut taken by the credit card issuer, why do I have to go through some random card to get a 2% discount, when prices could just be 2% lower across the board by default?

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BenjiWiebe 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Unfortunately a 2% rewards card usually costs the merchant more then 2%.

High tier cards are more expensive to accept, unless your merchant rate is a high enough flat rate that it covers the average and then some.

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anonymars 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

To add on to that: if someone fraudulently uses your credit card, it's the issuer's money that's now missing and they need to get it back. If someone fraudulently uses your debit card, it's your money that's now missing that you need to get back. Hopefully things don't start overdrawing your account in the meantime.

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hvb2 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

My experience with disputes isn't that....

Yes we'll open a dispute. Yes we'll give you a credit immediately. But then we just take the sellers word for it that they're trying to make it right and charge you anyway.

This is my one singular experience with a dispute but that's with a big bank getting almost all of my transactions over the course of years....

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maest 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

How come this is not a problem in Europe? Credit cards make same promises there, but usage is greatly diminished.

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hibikir 11 hours ago | parent [-]

A very big percentage of credit card expenses in the US come from cards with rewards programs, so you get money/gift cards/travel discounts in exchange for using the credit card instead of the debit card. A lot of this is funded from much higher interchange fees: It's ultimately the merchant you buy from funding most of the rewards. Since those very high fees are nowadays illegal in the EU, European credit cards cannot have this kind of generosity, and incentives are very different.

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prattmic 10 hours ago | parent [-]

How does this work when using a US credit card in the EU? I assume the merchant still pays the lower interchange fee, so are the banks just betting that customers won’t do a large proportion of spending abroad?

	▲	kasey_junk 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		They exempt those transactions from rewards.

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yonaguska 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

	▲	hvb2 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Every atm has a camera... So they could just check that. Also, that means the person had the PIN too? That becomes harder to defend

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pc86 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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.

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otabdeveloper4 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In the rest of the world (not the US), "credit card" == "debit card without zero overdraft limit".

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aprilthird2021 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Most 18-22 year olds are living alone for the first time and have just set up their first bank account and are spending all their time focused on studies and trying to get an internship, so they aren't focused on the difference between credit card and debit card, plus they don't spend a lot out anyways