Hacker News Reader

Comment by GordonS | Hacker News Reader

> in a lot of European countries, we have cards that we call credit cards which are actually deferred debit cards. The money you've spent is debited from your account on a fixed date at the end of the month

Interesting, I'm in the UK and have never heard of this kind of card.

View on HN

Elsewhere a 'deferred debit card' would be called a 'charge card' and were in widespread use before credit cards became popular.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_card

It seems as though credit cards (via the Barclaycard) became established in the UK before charge cards got a foothold:

http://www.theukcardsassociation.org.uk/history_of_cards/ind...

I am in the Netherlands and this is exactly how all of my credit cards work. I have never seen a credit card that does not work this way.

For both credit cards issued by ING you can choose to pay only partly at the end of the month, and have revolving credit. Most people don't choose this though, as far as I know. I didn't check the other banks.

In the US, American Express is the famous example of this. The green, gold, and platinum cards are all "charge cards" and not credit cards. All the other types of cards (airline branded, Blue Sky/Cash, etc) are all classic credit cards. It was big news when AmEx started issuing regular credit cards since they were always charge-only.

Also the UK, the only place where it's common is in corporate cards. The classic green corporate Amex uses this model, for instance.

Ah, you're right - I actually have one and forgot that's how it works!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com