alt Hacker NewsIt gets interesting when the two system interacts. Friends visiting the US told me that at the POS terminal they had to choose credit card despite paying with a Visa/Mastercard debit card issued by an European bank.
By the way, here banks even have daily bank / wire transfer limit that can be changed only by a personal visit to a branch, so even if your online banking credentials are stolen, the attacker can not empty your account.
> they had to choose credit card
And that doesn’t always work. For example, at a Chevron petrol station in California in the middle of nowhere we tried several European credit and debit cards, and nothing worked. At the end, the guy working there helped us with some prepaid option at the counter. He didn’t believe us until he tried himself that really none of our cards worked.
But the situation is way better than 5+ years ago. Back then, almost every second purchase of ours had some problem with our cards in the US. Now, we had like one or two in more than a week.
But of course, some car rental companies still pretend that they are generous that they allow debit cards. Not just in the US.