Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Debit cards are hidden financial infrastructure

bam.kalzumeus.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 398 posts

Re: Debit cards are hidden financial infrastructure

#161

Post by jjav »

cloudbonsai wrote: post #104
aynyc wrote: post #4

Use credit card, it’s the card issuers that are on the hook for fraud. It’ll help you build credit. Use debit when you don’t have the means or credit history.

To be fair, debit card offers a few advantages over credit card: * Debit card allows to set granular spending limit (e.g. $100 per day). So you can protect the potential amount that a fraudster can spend with your card. * You can set it up to send transaction details via email on every purchase. This is a lot more convenient than, say, checking the credit card statement at the end of every month. I actually prefer us…

You can set up email alerts on every transaction for credits cards in many banks. Probably not all.

On the fraudsters, with credit cards the limit you'll be liable is generally $0 ($50 in rare cases), by law (regulation).

Re: Debit cards are hidden financial infrastructure

#162

Post by dsomers »

joecool1029 wrote: post #141
NikolaNovak wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to re learn the lyrics to Oh Canada and sing them joyously and thankfully... Our banking system gets a lot of ire but dear Gawd.

I seem to recall there being service levels at banks in Canada and maximum numbers of transactions per month until one gets hit with per-transaction fees. I was told explicitly when I opened my TD Canada Trust account there that it was imperative that I both keep money in the accounts and use them occasionally or dormancy fees would accrue (and if there was no money left, they'd then slam it with overdraft fees). The…

Totally agree, the Canadian banking system is a corrupt cartel the levies it’s own tax on every Canadian. This was made even more clear to me when I moved to the Netherlands and every banking fee was suddenly 1/3 as much as in Canada for the exact same service.

Re: Debit cards are hidden financial infrastructure

#163

Post by bserge »

morsch wrote: post #144
dustintrex wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also another illustration of how backwards US payments infra is. In the EU, SEPA instant payments are just that: by law it can take a maximum of 10 seconds for the recipient to get paid, including across countries. And, of course, they're free. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area

Maybe they're free where you are, but apparently in Germany banks, if they support it at all, charge 0.5 EUR on average. I've never used it.

N26, a German bank, has unlimited free ATM withdrawals in most countries and only 3/mo in Germany.

If not for all the laws, this country would be USA on steroids.

Re: Debit cards are hidden financial infrastructure

#164

Post by rdevsrex »

numair wrote: post #43

The beginning of this article is a fairy tale that ignores what used to be one of the biggest drivers of revenue for banks: overdraft fees. Maybe the HN crowd has never been in a situation where they were auto-billed into a negative balance, which then caused an overdraft fee that then further drove their balance into negative territory, but this was a weekly/monthly fiasco for millions of Americans. I was once in a…

Yeah, that’s why eventually paid 5 bucks a month more for an account without an overdraft facility, meaning any negative transactions would be rejected. I can’t believe this isn’t the default.

Re: Debit cards are hidden financial infrastructure

#165

Post by Foobar8568 »

steveBK123 wrote: post #99
mherdeg wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just overdraft fees right? It's overdraft fees plus transaction reordering which makes the magic happen. I'm still kind of mesmerized on this one, it felt like regulatory action almost happened, the most lucrative of the overdraft practices got limited circa 2009/2010, and then banks voluntarily toned it down and the regulators mostly looked the other way on things like reordering?

The transaction re-ordering to maximize the amount of overdraft events should have put execs in prison. Out of all the obviously corrupt, mal-intent, direct consumer harming practices this was quite near the top.

In a French bank, I have credit transactions first then debit ones, in a Swiss bank, the contrary, I was shocked, especially that day, I did check my bank account to verify if I could proceed with a wire transfer, the following day, it shown a temporary minus amount but I didn't get an overdraft. So yes, fuck banks.

Re: Debit cards are hidden financial infrastructure

#166

Post by R0b0t1 »

numair wrote: post #43

The beginning of this article is a fairy tale that ignores what used to be one of the biggest drivers of revenue for banks: overdraft fees. Maybe the HN crowd has never been in a situation where they were auto-billed into a negative balance, which then caused an overdraft fee that then further drove their balance into negative territory, but this was a weekly/monthly fiasco for millions of Americans. I was once in a…

If your colleague had thrown him out of the window the world would be a better place. Think on that.

Re: Debit cards are hidden financial infrastructure

#167

Post by xdennis »

smabie wrote: post #80
p2t2p wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australian here. Don’t use credit card, setup a separate account for bills, direct debit everything from there, don’t keep anything big on your debit card and use it with Apple Pay everywhere. No fraud, no fees, no complex things and rules to remember.

Why would you ever not want to put something on a cc? It's quite literally free money (rewards/points + you can delay payments for a month and pay no interest)

Why spend money you don't have?

If you do have money, why do you need to borrow money you already have?

Re: Debit cards are hidden financial infrastructure

#168

Post by kijin »

markdown wrote: post #145
tcgv wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to ask "can you give me a discount if I pay in cash?" and most of the times the merchant would say no. Then I stopped asking and started using only credit cards for at least earning some "rewards" back. ("rewards" purposely in quotes since it's not really a reward, but amex/visa/mastercard want us to think it is - there's no free lunch)

In my country you pay extra (2.5%) at the checkout counter for using a credit card.

In my country that would be illegal. Here, the price is fixed first, and the customer has the right to choose any supported method of payment.

Merchants are free to offer more reward points or discount coupons for cash payments, though.

Re: Debit cards are hidden financial infrastructure

#169

Post by josephcsible »

chrisseaton wrote: post #7
wmf wrote: post #5

Besides the gig economy I heard that a lot of retail businesses like Walmart now pay employees by debit card instead of check. So instead of a check cashing place taking 3% of people's paychecks some bank is taking 1.x% in interchange, and if the bank happens to be owned by Walmart well who would notice.

> a check cashing place taking 3% of people's paychecks You have to pay to deposit your pay in the US?

Only if you want cash immediately. In this case, the fee is basically insurance against the check bouncing. It's free if you instead deposit the check and wait a day or two for it to clear before withdrawing the cash, since in that case they can just take the money back out of your account and not suffer any loss if you gave them a fraudulent check.

Re: Debit cards are hidden financial infrastructure

#170

Post by maccolgan »

oneplane wrote: post #143
chrisseaton wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a debit card you’re relying on the bank’s good will. With a credit card it’s the law. Also with credit you can dispute it before you pay it. With debit you’re trying to fix it up after your paid it.

It's almost as if the law is setup to let people make bad choices with money they don't actually have so that some value can be extracted from them later.

Like it or not protecting people costs money, with credit cards banks have an opportunity to potentially recoup that, otherwise they don't do that at all or only do it when they can afford it.
Post reply on HN