Just so folks understand: in Canada (actually, pretty much everywhere but America) every bank issues it's own non-credit-card affiliated debit card that can be used to pay for things at stores (or get money at the ATM). So this is annoying, but not a huge deal.
I'll get to the cash, get told "sorry, no visa", and take out my debit card to pay that way instead. Really not a big deal.
It's just Walmart annoying their customers to try to prove some point to Visa.
A few years ago the pinguins took over (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x48eLs8tnJo) and basically every card in the UK is now either Visa/MasterCard/Amex and very few Maestro.
Ah. That explains why when my Maestro card expired, it was replaced with a Visa Debit card.
The latter is more widely accepted for online shopping (only some merchants accept Maestro, whereas everyone accepts Visa and Visa Debit usually works there), so I was happy.
In Brazil, you can enable the same card you use to manage your bank account and withdraw cash as a Visa/Mastercard credit card. So every time you make a purchase you get a prompt like this
1. CREDITO
2. DEBITO
where you choose if you want to pay with credit or debit.
Last year I went to the UK on vacation. While paying my bills I noticed most people wouldn't know what to do when prompted. They would look confused and just hand me the card machine and let me handle it.
When I use my card outside the UK in a country where this is the norm (e.g. Italy) I am asked to choose the 'circuit' before paying, but the only choice I am given is "VISA DEBIT" - this is on ATMs and Chip&PIN machines.
I don't think any UK banks have their own payment network. The cards you get to access the account directly are debit cards (usually Visa Debit or Maestro), some (i.e. children accounts) give you a 'cash card' which only works at that bank's ATMs.
As far as I can tell, virtually all UK banks issue Visa Debit cards nowadays. Certainly Halifax, HSBC (First Direct), Natwest, Santander, Lloyds and RBS do which covers most of the population.
In the past a lot of cards were Switch, which became Maestro and then everyone dumped it for Visa.
Fortunately we still have the Link system where you're not charged for using an ATM that doesn't belong to your bank. cough Canada cough.
In Canada, debit transactions are run through the Interac network, which is a non-profit set up by the Canadian banks. Interac also has an email money transfer service which is widely used.
Canadian banking is different from everywhere because the market is protected from foreign competition. It makes Canadian bank stocks good to own, but makes banking expensive and annoying for Canadians.
All true, but the system arguably has some important advantages. The rate of tech adoption (e.g. Interac) and the relative insulation from global banking turmoil are two that instantly come to mind.
I hate the banks as much as any red blooded Canadian but it's important to remember that our system is the envy of many other countries.
It's with good reason that the former Bank of Canada governor (Mark Carney) was recruited to head up the Bank of England and also serves as the chairman of the G20's Financial Stability Board.
Except its still a debit card, with all of the problems of debit cards, and none of the additional protections you get from using a credit card.
Somebody steals your credit card and goes on a spree? Call your bank, dispute the charges, and life goes on.
Somebody steals your debit card? Good luck, money is gone from your bank account, and BTW, your mortgage and auto payments just bounced, so we're going to tack on some overdraft fees too. Have a nice day.
> Somebody steals your debit card? Good luck, money is gone from your bank account
I had $4000 stolen from my bank account via a compromised debit card. The charges were reversed the same day. The bank is still liable for fraudulent transactions if you didn't authorize them.
My bank issued me a debit/ATM card by default. I asked, and they replaced it with a plain ATM card that's not a debit card.
They also had this insecure-dy-default behavior allowing checking account overdraws to start pulling out of savings. It's worth checking that setting, too.
I was interested to read in the comments on a different topic that businesses typically have a deposit-only account, a withdrawals-only account and an account in the middle.
As a family, we set up an extra account at Schwab to write checks and do automatic payments against. There wasn't any additional cost to us - having some money sitting in the account is hardly worth worrying about with what Schwab (or anyone else) pays in interest.
The big benefit to me is that the account doesn't have over-draft protections. I have to manually move money into the account from a different account where paychecks, etc. go into. That account can't write checks, etc.
If our account is compromised, well, we lose (temporarily, I hope) what's in there but not the cash that accumulates to pay for property taxes, etc.
ATM vs Debit/ATM is a good call, I will try and switch my current debit cards.
Overdraw protection is tricky. For example Ally offers it for free for me. If I really did accidentally overdraw my checking, I would want it sucked from my savings. However if someone stole my Ally debit, I would not want both my checking AND savings drained...
You can mitigate by keeping two accounts. In your debit card account you keep a minimum balance and transfer funds in as needed to cover purchases. For automatic ACH payments (mortgage, etc.) have those come out of the other account that does not have a linked debit card.
So worst case you are without a small amount of money during any dispute/fraud resolution period, but your major regular ACH payments are not at risk.
The downside is having to monitor your balances closely and transfer funds more often (which can sometimes involve a fee but if you shop around you can find banks that don't change a fee for inter-account transfers).
The way I do it is my salary goes to a online savings account (~2% interest) that's not linked to any cards. I have a debit card I move money over to when I need cash out or to use it (simple with the bank's app). Then I have a CC (used for utilities etc) which I pay every billing period from the savings account.
Apparently debit cards are less awful now than when I stopped having to use them.
People can do what they want, but I'm personally very uneasy about directly exposing my bank accounts, so I use credit cards as a buffer. Moreover, I don't have a lot of faith in banks not engaging in shenanigans that I've seen them do to me before, like transaction reordering, double charging debit transactions, debiting charges immediately, while sitting on deposits for up to a week, etc.
Not sure what you're talking about. As others have said, I've had fraudulent transactions on my debit card, and my bank called me to let me know, reversed the charges and cancelled the card and sent me a new one.
With credit card, that easy?
I had some fraudulent transactions in my credit card and I had to
a) File a police report
b) Do an (offline)report and document every transaction I considered to be fraudulent
c) Sent these reports to the bank, where they would go thru it (some sort of committee) and if accepted I would be refunded.
Quite-a-hassle, took several hours to do those reports...
(This is Danish/Finnish bank, Danske Bank. I'm no longer their customer)
>Somebody steals your debit card? Good luck, money is gone from your bank account, and BTW, your mortgage and auto payments just bounced, so we're going to tack on some overdraft fees too. Have a nice day.
In Canada the account holder is not liable for fraudulent transactions, whether it is credit or debit... a benefit of our highly regulated banks.
A few years ago TD Bank Canada changed its TD Bank branded debit cards to a Visa branded debit cards it wasn't before that just an Interac logo no Visa affiliation. I don't know why TD Bank did it but it's now linked to Visa and it seemed rather sudden.
I wonder if that means my TD Bank Visa brand debit card won't work or if it's only Visa credit cards?
Well, it can be used as a credit card for online purchases. You can also use Interac Online with it for Canadian online merchants, which there are relatively few of.
Canadian visa debits are still interac cards, and most retailers in Canada have their machines set up to only allow treating them as such (because fees). This is actually a bit annoying when the interac network is down, but not the credit card network.
I'm not sure what extremely pedantic point you're trying to make.
The relevance of the parent you responded to is that a Canadian shop not accepting Visa (or Mastercard) is only a very mild inconvenience because there are other widely used payment networks.
I don't see what you're not understanding. If you live in America, then surely you are aware that Visa + Mastercard are overwhelmingly dominant as payment networks, yes?
Obviously Discover, Amex and Diner's Club exist, but they are barely worth mentioning. Hardly anyone (proportionally) carries those cards, and only a few merchants accept them.
In the United States, for a merchant to refuse Visa would be suicidal. In Canada, it's almost a non-issue because all the debit cards are processed on another, non-Visa network.
I'll get to the cash, get told "sorry, no visa", and take out my debit card to pay that way instead. Really not a big deal.
It's just Walmart annoying their customers to try to prove some point to Visa.