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Comment by Aardwolf | Hacker News Reader

> The reason is that in the event of a fraudulent charge

Not sure if a fraudulent charge of a debit card is a thing I ever heard of in Europe. These cards have also been using chips for over 20 years. Maybe they work differently here.

To me credit cards sound less secure than debit cards: debit cards have chips and pin codes. With credit cards, knowing the number is in theory enough (they have digital verification now too though). Also, with debit cards, you put it in the payment terminal yourself.

With credit cards, in the US I've had the waiters in restaurants taking your credit card from your table, walking to somewhere else with it, and giving it back to you later. I had never seen that before (In Europe, they carry a portable payment thingie in which you can put/tap credit or debit cards to the table). How is that more secure? They could easily copy the number there.

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The U.S. has legislation limiting consumer liability of credit card fraud to $50, and many cards will further waive that to $0. It's just simply not the consumer's problem if someone copies their credit card number and uses it for fraud. They just have to call the bank to report the fraud, and then the bank will cancel the old card, issue a new one, and then it's the bank's problem on how to get the money back.

In the US, fraudulent charges are rampant. The default expectation is that a card eventually has fraudulent charges.

A slightly different but similar issue is paying for services in advance but never rendered. When that happens on a credit card I just inform the card issuer and they handle it.

That credit cards don't have PIN codes has nothing to do with them being credit cards vs debit cards, it's just a choice by the industry to not institute them.

It is less that cards don't have PINs for the chip, but that they still have magnetic stripes. It is still possible to skim the card info. I assume that there is mandate to update equipment but I still see registers with swipe. Issuers can distribute cards without magstripe in 2027. But they keep pushing the date out.

IIRC with most credit card purchases in the US, if the retailer only takes magnetic strips, they're liable themselves; if the issuing bank doesn't offer EMV cards, then they're liable; after that is the credit card company I believe, who has an option to put up to $50 liability on the owner (though they rarely do).

Generally I've seen this happen when you've contracted to do business in some form and the other side reneges on it in some way. Like you ordered something online and it never ships.

We were going to get a large water purifier from Costco. On the order of $6000. We paid, but we had 3 days to cancel. We found it for significantly cheaper the next day and cancelled. 3 months later Costco still hadn't reversed the charge, so we challenged it with the credit card company. Fixed in 24 hours.

Also, it's worth pointing out that when you challenge something successfully, it's effectively like it never happened. Interest gets rolled back and you can call to have late payments associated with that time period striken from your credit report.

On the flip side, I would never use a debit card. I've been told "your pin was used so it must have been you" when contesting small things there. Credit card have chips and some banks allow you to use pins.

Chips don't make the cards more secure. They just shift liability back to the consumer making it cheaper for credit card companies.

If someone steals your card and can guess your pin, then you're out of luck in filing any claim because obviously you disclosed your pin.

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