alt Hacker NewsI think it's healthy for a population to not have as part of day-to-day life to pay with credit, effectively paying with money you might not actually have, going into debt. How many US citizens are crippled by credit card debt, and the interest on it?
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You also get contactless payment on debit cards.
It's not about credit/debit, it's about phone/card. Americans tend to use "credit card" as a generic term for payment cards.
And yes, phone NFC payment is one of those technically unnecessary conveniences that's really easy to get used to. You probably already have your phone out or at least accessible in like one second, paying with it instead of pulling out your wallet and finding a card or even cash is just sooo nice. I hate that I've gotten this used to it.
That being said, you can still get NFC payment on a rooted or reflashed phone. Instead of Google Wallet, find a bank or card provider that has their own app. I use the Curve "proxy card" and it works fine.
Using debit or credit cards is unrelated to the UX. Both are available with google wallet or physically.
You can pay with credit card as a convenience + fraud protection mechanism without ever paying interest by just paying your bill off every month.
When chip and pin was first rolled out, Europeans were shocked by the low security of swipe cards in the US. The reason that wasn’t an issue for Americans was (and still is) that credit cards have excellent fraud protections.
If someone steals my credit card, it is the bank’s problem, not mine.
The risk of paying by debit card on a regular basis is unfathomable to me, even with fancy tech to try to make it secure.