The bank, at least all of mine, will ask for proof that you tried to resolve it first with the seller, so that is why I believe.

I’m European and protection laws are nice to have but if a shop doesn’t refund you those laws don’t automatically give you your money back. That is where a credit-card comes in handy. I don’t know any bank that offers this protection on a debit-card.

Unless they have a direct agreement with a credit card company, most payment providers will give one-size-fits-all blended rate about 2.7% per transaction, even if it's debit.

What are you talking about? When have you last been to Europe!? Of course you can pay with debit cards all over Europe, every card terminal accepts them!

Online the same, you just use your card details like a credit card, the payment system is the same for years now anyway - thats the whole point of initiatives like this digital euro and Wero!

I am Irish and in my experience most people use debit cards these days. I have a credit card but almost never use it.

Banks suck it up, but fraud is likely a lot less prevalent because 3D Secure is mandatory for online transactions and chip and PIN were ubiquitous way before the US seemed to have started using it.

2FA on online transactions, secure PIN authentication for in-person purchases.

These reduce the level of fraud, and the banks cover the rest.

The basic stuff (online shop not delivering, going bankrupt etc) are covered for debit cards in a similar way as credit cards in other countries.

I've never had a fraudulent transaction myself, and it's over 20 years since I first had a debit card — with a chip and PIN.

SEPA Direct debit still has a confirmation from the account holder. You usually see the pending transaction before it clears and can block it. Some banks (dreadful and hated bunq for example) require an active confirmation from the account holder before it is allowed to clear. Some have a setting hidden somewhere that sets the policy to autoaccept or something else.

I haven't ever seen illegitimate direct debit. I guess you need to have an actual business to issue direct debit orders and bank will show you the door and freeze your money if you start doing funny things. I guess.

Probably the dreadful R word has something to do with it, go figure.

On cards we also have limits and the only time I saw something happening was after being unfortunate enough to pass through ~~the ghet~~ the glorious capital of our continental Empire, majestic city of Brussels. That time the bank tried their best to call me.

Yes, I think most people have several accounts, or at least a main and a "spare money" account. If you can prove a fraud the law mandates the bank to back it up. In EU bank apps there are often many warnings and popups when authorizing a transaction. Also in EU you can get a refund of any digitally made purchase, by law you can send back the item for 30 days.

Chargeback always seemed strange to me and never needed it. Fraud should be reported and handled at the root, not by making digital transfers into some magic disappearing money.

Never had fraud on my credit or debit cards, and with 3D Secure it's difficult to pull off (basically 2FA for all online credit card purchases).

But I did have someone fraudulently making direct debit transfers from my bank account. My bank cleaned that up within three business days

can you give an example of being defrauded? I don't really know what people mean when they say that.

The only place I (as an EU citizen) ever came in contact with direct fraud was in... US.

It's not much of an issue within the EU area. The banks tend to offer insurance products for people who want to cover that risk.

I don't think people keep all their money on a single account. I have 20 in my bank (different savings, some foreign currency accounts, etc.), and only one is tied to my debit card. I move money there when I need it. Opening another account number is just few clicks away. There is a limit for it also.

Single account sounds more like a boomer thing.

As long as you don't go too far below zero, payments will go through. This may differ a bit per country.

The exact technical details aren’t terribly relevant imho, just that the EU has found the will to implement a superior value storage and transfer system, a benefit of which is avoiding US entities and infra. I have intentionally simplified for the layman audience, and understand if you take issue with my simplification.

Your comment history shows a decidedly anti EU sentiment, including against EU sovereignty (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48515118, for example), make of that what you will.

> How come the EU is making a "digital sovereignty" push? Why are only EU people allowed to compete for EU services? Are there no evil people in the EU?

I like tech that improves efficiency (disintermediating unnecessary US commercial payment processors) and decouples from proven threat actors and nation state aggressors, that is my interest on this topic, ymmv.

US card fraud rate is significantly higher than in the EU. In 2015 it was about 0.042% in the EU, vs 0.1388% for the US. The 2021 rates for the EU fell to ~0.028%.

You get nervous about giving your card to a waiter because you’re in a foreign place with a nonsense payment system worst than most developing countries and it’s not something you’re ever asked to do anywhere else.

It's seem completely crazy to me to give your card to a waiter.

Taking a card away from the table is weird for us because it's not what we do here so it becomes suspicious. Even so skimming is much less of a problem since chip and pin were introduced. Nobody I know has had any issues with fraud. We also require 2fa for online purchases.

There's also a large difference between counties. In the Nordics its ubiquitous, I haven't carried or needed cash for almost 20 years. Meanwhile Germany has barely started to use cards.

Yes, because handing over your card to a stranger is considered a fairly crazy thing to do in most countries other than the US, as cards require PIN entry for most transactions (which actually does meaningfully prevent in-person card fraud).

In the US, you simply have no choice if you want to eat in a restaurant, so people are used to it. I'd expect total skimming rates to be higher in the US, since magnetic stripe transactions have been phased out in effectively all other countries. People don't care because they don't directly pay for the resulting fraud out of pocket. As a society, of course everybody still pays for it.

> Largely it is the merchants who have to prove that there was no fraud

No, in-store, it's the issuing bank that's liable, even in the US (unless the card is PIN-preferring, which is usually only true for foreign cards).