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Digital euro clears key hurdle as EU seeks to break free from U.S. credit cards

finance.yahoo.com

251–260 of 386 posts

Re: Digital euro clears key hurdle as EU seeks to break free from U.S. credit cards

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fraud detection of the card processors is effective and they will disable a debit card before that happens. I've always had the money returned automatically the few times I've had one compromised.

Same fraud systems monitor credit cards except in the American case you get at worst 1% cash back so 1% off the purchase price of everything and if something does happen, and regardless of protections fraud still occurs, it’s the bank’s money that is gone and not yours. Separately the EU is a large collection of states and each one has its varying levels of participation and sophistication with payment processing. Ap…

Accepting cards from US-controlled schemes is not an issue at all. The geopolitical issue is not having any alternative, and these US schemes being the only way to pay even in domestic transactions.

Almost nobody considered this a problem until a few years ago, but the relevant EU stakeholders got pretty rattled recently [1], and my prediction is that this particular bell can't be un-rung.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/law/2026/feb/18/international-cr...

Re: Digital euro clears key hurdle as EU seeks to break free from U.S. credit cards

#252
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminder to all commenters that Europe is not a single homogeneous country and somewhat diverse in various things, including payments and finance. Credit cards are definitely a thing in many European countries.

Umm, no? Citation needed.

For what? Credit cards existing in Europe and having more than zero users? I trust that Google will serve you well if you really don't believe me.

Re: Digital euro clears key hurdle as EU seeks to break free from U.S. credit cards

#253
post #250

Horrible idea. It's a step towards single-tier banking like in the Soviet Union, where the central bank takes the role of commercial banks. There's no other reason for this than surveillance and control. There already exists multiple EU-wide payment systems handled by commercial banks. They just need to step up their game a little bit to get rid of Visa and Mastercard, which provide all the debit and credit cards.

[dead]

Re: Digital euro clears key hurdle as EU seeks to break free from U.S. credit cards

#255

Reminder to the people reading this thread and overall comments, that in Europe everyone uses Debit Cards instead of Credit Cards. Credit Card in Europe is very much associated with Debt.

Credit Card is everywhere associated with debt

Re: Digital euro clears key hurdle as EU seeks to break free from U.S. credit cards

#256
post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mostly about who possesses the money. With debit, the money is transferred. With credit, the money is scheduled for transfer, subject to my approval. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possession_is_nine-tenths_of_t...

This has basically nothing to do with it. A bank deposit is a liability of the bank, and possession is not a useful lens here. What matters are the legal and contractual rights and obligations you have against the card issuer. In the US, these are historically different for credit cards (Fed Regulation Z) and debit cards (Regulation E), but since it's now effectively the same two schemes running it all and imposing t…

> The main practical difference nowadays is that in the case of debit cards, you're out your own money for a few days, while with credit cards, the only thing that temporarily suffers is your open-to-buy/line of credit

Right, and this is GGP's main point

The risk to a debit card user in the US is higher because the money you need to pay your rent or mortgage may temporarily disappear due to fraud, and may take longer to resolve than your deadline with your landlord. When using a credit card, that risk is not on you.

Re: Digital euro clears key hurdle as EU seeks to break free from U.S. credit cards

#257
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which is in fact a massive pain in the ass, because car rentals and hotels often require credit cards to make reservations (at least in my experience...)

I've almost always found a debit card works in those cases.

I've heard stories like "fine, we'll take your debit card, but only if you also pay a non-reimboursable $$$ deposit in cash" for car rental. (Mostly in central/eastern Europe.)

(From what I was told, the thing in favor of a credit card is that the rental agency can put a hold on the security deposit for much longer than on a debit card: a few weeks vs a few days).

Re: Digital euro clears key hurdle as EU seeks to break free from U.S. credit cards

#258
post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mostly about who possesses the money. With debit, the money is transferred. With credit, the money is scheduled for transfer, subject to my approval. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possession_is_nine-tenths_of_t...

This has basically nothing to do with it. A bank deposit is a liability of the bank, and possession is not a useful lens here. What matters are the legal and contractual rights and obligations you have against the card issuer. In the US, these are historically different for credit cards (Fed Regulation Z) and debit cards (Regulation E), but since it's now effectively the same two schemes running it all and imposing t…

Ah, I see. This is about the prevailing consumer protections. In the US, debit is not treated with nearly as much privilege as the EU. While credit signals debt in the EU, debit signals poor financial situation in the US, since credit enjoys protections debit does not.

Re: Digital euro clears key hurdle as EU seeks to break free from U.S. credit cards

#259
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an outsider: which countries lean which way? I'm curious how things trend where and I didn't even really know that debit was used by a majority in certain places (Countries? Regions? Historical based delimiters?).

Germany is very debit-card oriented (with no interest of switching). The Netherlands seems similar. Eastern Europe and the Balkans are also mostly debit-card oriented, but people seem more open to switching to credit cards (if they can get one - especially the younger generation). Ireland and the U.K. seem much more credit-card oriented than rest of Europe. Turkey is also very CC oriented (kinda strange - was not exp…

The preferential treatment of credit cards for certain transactions influences how they're used in the UK.

Suppose in January two people Carol and Dave bought a £250 August flight to Paris from some outfit that didn't do a great job hedging their fuel prices. Carol used her credit card, Dave used his Debit card. UK law says Carol's flight was bought by her bank, after all her bank handed over the money, Carol is on the hook to pay them back but didn't directly pay. But Dave bought his ticket, the bank isn't responsible.

Today the airline fails because their fuel costs blew up. UK law says Carol should be able to get her money back from the bank because they bought this ticket and now it won't work -- this is called "Section 75". Dave may have some protections via other consumer protection rules, but he's more likely to end up losing out.

The best chance for Dave might be "Chargeback" which is a card scheme which might let Dave tell his bank that he now wishes he didn't pay for the ticket. It's not very likely to work because January is a long time ago and so the bank will probably argue that Dave should have realised earlier that he didn't want to make this transaction. Because this flight touches the EU there are a bunch of extra protections which might help, none of them is as simple as Section 75.

The Section 75 protections mean Brits who are credit-worthy tend to pay for large purchases on a [credit] card even if they intend to pay it off immediately.

Re: Digital euro clears key hurdle as EU seeks to break free from U.S. credit cards

#260
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Wero something you can hold in your hands? RuPay is just like Visa/Mastercard in the sense you get physical cards that you can use at ATMs, use at ecomm sites, etc. Wero doesn’t seem to be that. Am I missing something? Does making a new direct alternative to Visa/MC doesn’t make sense for the EU? If so, why?

Cards (as implemented in the US at least, i.e., with individual purchases not confirmed by the cardholder) are a relic of a different time in many ways. If you're building out a brand new system, why not make use of the computing device with input/output capabilities (that can be used to confirm amount, payee etc.) almost everybody already has in their pocket/purse anyway and instead rely on merchants being honest an…

Oh yeah, let's put our financial sovereignty in the hands of American companies who have been fined repeatedly by the EU for breaking various laws. Seriously, if you have a problem with MasterCard and Visa, I can't imagine how you could NOT have a problem with Alphabet and Apple.
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