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Comment by dawhizkid | Hacker News Reader

why...?

In most countries in Europe people don't really use credit cards. I only have a credit card because I travel outside Europe a lot (and want to pay online where proper payment solutions like iDeal or even PayPal are not supported).

Even when I travel outside I can use my Maestro card (tied to my bank account) 90% of the times, my credit card is more for backup purposes.

In my country (the Netherlands) you'll have a hard time paying for stuff with a credit card, most shops only accept Maestro cards and NFC payments through your phone. Though most ATMs do support credit cards. More and more shops start to not take cash anymore (expensive to handle).

I personally don't like credit cards since they are about as insecure as you can design a payment system (imo).

EDIT: I meant the insecurity of using credit cards for online payments.

Don't Dutch credit cards have a chip?

British ones have had them since around 2004. The technical security of the card is the same as a debit card. (There are legal differences.)

They might actually. As for the security: I only meant online payments (should have clarified).

All cards in Europe have chip but CCs are mostly used here for online shopping outside of the EU and that's totally unsecure if you need to type all your CC informations to an unknown source for online orders.

You mean, most people use Debit cards? Because everyone has one in its wallet. Although it's true I only use credit cards outside Europe, because AFAIK debit cards don't work.

It appears that that "een pinpas" is a form of a debit card, though not all debit cards work:

> Credit card use in the Netherlands is very low, and most credit cards cannot be used with EFTPOS, or charge very high fees to the customer. Debit cards can often, though not always, be used in the entire EU for EFTPOS. Most debit cards are Mastercard Maestro cards. Visa's V Pay cards are also accepted at most locations.

eg. an American Express debit card (or anything else that is not one of the above) won't work at an Albert Heijn or anywhere else.

I always use credit cards for online payments(Ireland), I rightly/wrongly perceived them as having better fraud protection. It has happened a few times where my credit card has been hit for unapproved transactions, majority of the time it was picked up before I noticed and I received a call from the bank, recently I noticed it before the bank did, gave them a call and the €500 was returned to the card in two days.

Out of interest why are debit cards more secure?

I should have better clarified what I meant. I think online payment systems that require you to enter:

- your name

- the card number

- the expiration date

- the CCV security code

In any system that is not controlled by your bank is very insecure. Since that is exactly the information required to do to new payments. Payment systems like iDeal simply connect (oath style) to your bank where you login securely and approve the payment.

Recently I booked a hotel room using Agoda and I used a credit card to pay, here is what happened:

- Agoda received all the information above from me.

- Agoda used booking.com to "fulfill" the booking, they passed all of my credit card details to booking.com

- Booking.com gave my credit card details to the hotel (actually a small family owned guesthouse).

- When I arrived the guesthouse has written down all the information above on a post it attached to the monitor. Before telling them who I was they showed me the post it and asked me if that was me.

There only about 5 places in the above list where this can go wrong...

In Europe SEPA Debit is cheaper and easier than credit card and you get customer protection in case anything goes wrong.

Plus I can tell my bank at any time that a specific vendor or merchant is no longer allowed to pull from my account.

I don't like paying with Credit Card. If a merchant or vendor abuses or looses the data, people can pull money from it.

Debit is much safer since it requires me to explicitly authorize the vendor and abuse is heavily punished. I can also just tell my bank to stop allowing specific SEPA Debits so I can lock out vendors that misbehave.

Interesting, in the US credit cards have much stronger protections and essentially any fraud is fairly trivial to get a charge back for in my experience (merchant eats the cost) without any impact on you. With debit cards fraud will drain your bank account instantly so there's less incentive for anyone to fix it (it's not their money in limbo). I also believe, but may be wrong, that up to fairly recently there were also stronger legal protections on credit card fraud versus debit card fraud.

Well, debit cards have strong protections here too.

If someone uses a debit card or SEPA debit on my bank account (german), I have 6 weeks to report that to my bank and I'm out. The bank then has a week to get the money back of they're responsible, etc.

Here it is definitely their money and they want it back.

I don't get this logic. You have zero liability for unauthorized charges on your credit card. Also, by definition, when you use a credit card your bank lending you money to buy something...this isn't "your money" at all.

I feel much safer using a CC since I know these aren't my funds vs a debit card where it is my money.

I also have zero liability for any unauthorized charges on my bank account via SEPA Debit. By definition it's the bank's money the moment I dispute it and vendors are required to put up a legal contact with full responsibility when they sign up.

I feel safer because I don't need a credit, I pay "cash".

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