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0 pointsjguimont12y ago0 comments

In Canada, most in store transaction are using Interac and not credit cards. I wonder when Square will accept both. I guess europeen countries have something similar to Interac as well (french's blue card?).

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mrweasel12y ago

I'm not really sure what Interac is, but a large number of European credit cards aren't credit cards, they are debit cards, issued by your bank. The cards are co-branded VISA or MasterCard. Some countries have they own national cards, Denmark has Dankort, the Netherlands have they own, Finland is dropping theirs I think, and I'm sure there's more.

The point is that the European rules for credit cards is EVERY different from the US. Signatures are no longer valid, you need the PIN and a lot of ATM and terminals will only read the chip. New terminals without chip read won't get approved.

Launching a swipe terminal is catering to a dying marked.

MrDOS12y ago

Interac is actually the name of a payment services company (they license and operate point-of-sale plastic-handling machines), but the name is most commonly associated with the Canadian variety of debit cards. As in Europe, the cards are issued by the bank, but they're not generally cobranded with any credit card company and payments made with them draw funding directly from your chequing account.

kelvie12y ago

That's not true, at least not here in Vancouver (though a lot of the Chinese here still tend to prefer cash). Many American banks have quite attractive rewards for using credit cards, so many people opt to use credit cards instead.