I use credit cards as a proxy for my bank accounts. I know that my issuing bank will protect me from all fraud so I don't have to worry about losing money if I buy something from a fraudulent merchant. I also know I can do things like chargebacks if I have to.
None of this is addressed by digital currency, it's basically like using cash which is haphazard today when there are so many scams everywhere around the world.
I do have to say though, that with customer protection laws we have it has never happened to hear about a friend getting a charge back from the bank, usually you go to the seller first (or the platform if you got scammed) and you get refunded there
I have some Irish friends. And Ireland seems similar to the US when it comes to credit card usage (vs debit). I assume that is because Ireland is heavily influenced by US and UK banking habits. On other hand, Germans only use debit cards.
That's definitely not the case. Many people would have credit cards, but there's a lot less incentive to actually use them than there is in the US, because the interchange (paid ultimately by the merchant) is capped at 0.3% in the EU (whereas in the US it can be upward of 3% on high-end cards). The interchange pays for the 'reward' schemes that US card issuers provide, largely. Without those, why bother?
I've a credit card, but I essentially never use it, except when visiting the US (where some vendors actually refuse debit cards, or at least used to).
In the US you'll almost always get your money back if someone defrauds your debit card but you could be in for a painful time if you depend on the money in that checking account until it gets fixed.
These reduce the level of fraud, and the banks cover the rest.
The basic stuff (online shop not delivering, going bankrupt etc) are covered for debit cards in a similar way as credit cards in other countries.
I've never had a fraudulent transaction myself, and it's over 20 years since I first had a debit card — with a chip and PIN.
Chargeback always seemed strange to me and never needed it. Fraud should be reported and handled at the root, not by making digital transfers into some magic disappearing money.
I haven't ever seen illegitimate direct debit. I guess you need to have an actual business to issue direct debit orders and bank will show you the door and freeze your money if you start doing funny things. I guess.
Probably the dreadful R word has something to do with it, go figure.
On cards we also have limits and the only time I saw something happening was after being unfortunate enough to pass through ~~the ghet~~ the glorious capital of our continental Empire, majestic city of Brussels. That time the bank tried their best to call me.
But I did have someone fraudulently making direct debit transfers from my bank account. My bank cleaned that up within three business days
It's not much of an issue within the EU area. The banks tend to offer insurance products for people who want to cover that risk.
Single account sounds more like a boomer thing.
Online the same, you just use your card details like a credit card, the payment system is the same for years now anyway - thats the whole point of initiatives like this digital euro and Wero!
One big difference is that in the U.S. cardholders are largely protected from credit card fraud (not debit card fraud), so the card vendors have to take the risk and so have robust anti-fraud measures (both before and after payment). Largely it is the merchants who have to prove that there was no fraud. Whereas in Europe the burden of evidence (not proof) is with the cardholder.
There's also a large difference between counties. In the Nordics its ubiquitous, I haven't carried or needed cash for almost 20 years. Meanwhile Germany has barely started to use cards.
You get nervous about giving your card to a waiter because you’re in a foreign place with a nonsense payment system worst than most developing countries and it’s not something you’re ever asked to do anywhere else.
In the US, you simply have no choice if you want to eat in a restaurant, so people are used to it. I'd expect total skimming rates to be higher in the US, since magnetic stripe transactions have been phased out in effectively all other countries. People don't care because they don't directly pay for the resulting fraud out of pocket. As a society, of course everybody still pays for it.
> Largely it is the merchants who have to prove that there was no fraud
No, in-store, it's the issuing bank that's liable, even in the US (unless the card is PIN-preferring, which is usually only true for foreign cards).
... No. It's just not done in Europe because it is _not permitted_. Chip and pin was made mandatory decades ago, and for that the cardholder must be present. It's not unreasonable to be disconcerted when something which just doesn't happen in your experience (the waiter takes your card away!) happens.
Skimming is also mostly now a US thing, as non-US cards no longer require a magnetic stripe at all (the only US has a stay of execution; Mastercard plans to completely phase out magstripes by 2033, and I think Visa is similar).
The US has _far_ more card fraud than the EU (about $15bn vs $1.5bn/year), largely for technological reasons (the US doesn't require, and many issuers don't even support, chip and pin, or 3dsecure, and of course there's the magstripe thing, though most card fraud is online these days where 3dsecure is more relevant).
> Whereas in Europe the burden of evidence (not proof) is with the cardholder.
This is the case for chip and pin transactions. It would generally _not_ be the case for foreign non-chip-and-pin transactions, though cardholders may not necessarily be aware of this.
Credit cards being more consumer friendly than bank transfers is usually an artifact of the concrete implementation, not the abstract concept. In many EU/SEPA countries, returning a direct debit is much easier than a chargeback in the US, for example. In some countries, people even consider credit cards as less secure because filing a chargeback takes marginally longer with most banks (and requires a letter as opposed to a single click in online banking).
If the digital euro is to succeed, it'll of course have to compete with cards on the usability side as well.
People with stable jobs and good credit qualify for no-fee credit cards with rewards / cashback. As a consumer you benefit financially from having a credit card. Those elsewhere in the thread worried about "debt" - you just set to auto-withdrawl the entire balance of the card every month from your bank account. Now you have free money. I can't think of a reason not to take advantage of this system in some way.
But people with unstable jobs and poor credit help subsidize these "higher-end" credit cards when they pay high interest rates on their because they missed payments or hold a balance over multiple months. For those people credit cards could help with monthly cashflow issues but are essentially a scam and not much better than payday loans.
Yet another system that American consumers are kind of forced to participate in that's a sort of tragedy of the commons (high-reward cards wouldn't exist without the exploitation of other people not savvy enough to avoid high interest and fees)
Credit card rails are expensive legacy rails, that part of the stack is the target to disrupt in this context. In the context of the digital euro, you can think of it as a demand deposit account backed by the central bank (as most fiat deposit accounts are in some way) that is portable between banks, like you’d move a US investment account that can hold securities between brokers with ACATS at the clearinghouse.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48415854 (recent subthread with some related context)
Global instant payment system map: https://www.pymnts.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/PYMNTS-Rea... [pdf]
That's a massive oversimplification, and doesn't even address the OP's point that directly challenges this.
Lot of errors in your post.
Not to mention the fact that you confuse Mastercard and Visa for "credit card rails" further underscores this.
Your comment history shows a decidedly anti EU sentiment, including against EU sovereignty (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48515118, for example), make of that what you will.
> How come the EU is making a "digital sovereignty" push? Why are only EU people allowed to compete for EU services? Are there no evil people in the EU?
I like tech that improves efficiency (disintermediating unnecessary US commercial payment processors) and decouples from proven threat actors and nation state aggressors, that is my interest on this topic, ymmv.
I'm with you. While I'm no fan of the risk involved with missing a CC payment, there's a mountain of difference between credit and debit when it comes to fraud. It's literally you trying to get your money back (debit) versus some giant corporation trying to get _its_ money back (credit).
Somebody somehow stole my card credentials (online i think) and managed to get money out of my debit account through some obscure way without 2FA. The money disappeared but transactions showed up as “uncleared” and after few days i had money back. My bank said that i have to wait for the transactions to clear before they can start the transaction dispute because now it's in network hands.
Exactly, it is just their latest marketing move to have people accept it.
I was in a meeting at the ECB 6 years ago, the digital euro was high priority and we were supposed to see the first pilot 5 years ago.
The project is actually older and I saw schematic of the system and screenshot and the management interface 6 years ago. It was developed by a German company.
I am not sure why we are not using it right now... it can either be:
- the urgency, like upcoming financial collapse, disappeared,
- the bank lobbied so hard they killed the previous design,
- the EU is just insanely incompetent.
