1984.

This is interesting and poignant less because of the digital currency aspect and more because of the geopolitics. In a world where technology touches everything, tech itself becomes political.

The boulder that is de-Americanization has rolled too far downhill now and gained too much momentum; it can no longer be stopped.

The two thirds of Americans who either voted for Trump or couldn't be bothered to vote against him because they aReN't PoLiTiCaL are going to have to come to terms with their new place in the world one way or another. The US is no longer seen as a stable military partner[0], nor a stable economic partner as evidenced by TFA. It's easy to blame Trump but he is merely a symptom of the root cause, which is the attitudes shared by a huge number of Americans.

America will cease to be (and in some cases already has ceased to be) the world's epicenter of geopolitical soft power, scientific innovation, and financial clout. Treaties to which the US is a signatory are not worth the paper they're printed on. The foundations have already been laid, and the de-Americanization trend can't be stopped. For a people so accustomed to feeling like a privileged special class of world citizens, I honestly wonder if the American psyche can handle it. Probably we'll see a wave of people who "never supported Trump in the first place", just like tons of Germans were "never Nazis in the first place" once it became socially unpalatable.

So, congrats, I guess. At least you guys got some people with brown skin deported.

[0] https://www.readtheline.ca/p/matt-gurney-we-will-never-fucki...

Good. Now replace USD for trades.

> giving Union citizens the freedom to opt to pay with central bank money

Because nothing speaks freedom more than a crazily centralized digital currency

/s

Credit cards in Europe are a form of very short term credit: you spend and pay the entire balance on the next month. The is very different from the model in the US, which is designed to keep you in debt forever.

And how do I exit this walled garden and pay in GBP to UK, or USD to USA, or dare I say Yuan to China.

What about RSD to Serbia? CHF to Switzerland?

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.

??? Doesn't Europe already have Wero (iDEAL in Netherlands)? That's a system for making online payments. Money gets directly debited from your bank account.

I've always found credit cards stupid. You just want to pay for something, and then suddenly you have a debt. You shouldn't be in debt when you can clearly pay with money you have. Credit card companies advertise with "super easy payments" and "buy now pay later" but at the same time the government warns all the time that "lending money costs money". Also, if your credit card number and CVC get leaked, then anybody can steal any amount of money, and your only recourse is to regularly check your statements and warn the bank within a month. Whereas with Wero/iDEAL you must authorize the exact transaction at that exact amount.

Supposedly, Americans have these "credit card rewards" loyalty program things. Doesn't exist in Europe. You can only pay, you don't get any bonuses. Which makes the only reason to have a credit card is to be able to pay in web shops that don't accept Wero/iDEAL.

Yeah. This is also a threshold thing. There was a reluctance to accept that the US isn't as big a deal as it once was. The numbers weren't good during Obama's presidency†, but there wasn't much reason to ask "Is this still OK?" a decade ago and plenty of reasons to avoid stirring. Trump provided an impetus to ask the question in a circumstance where the numbers continue to look worse and there's political will to re-assess.

† The US has far too much debt, far too much poverty (despite all those billionaires) and it doesn't look great by comparison to peer nations on lots of fronts such as health access and educational attainment.

As wrong as all the other blanket statements.

Things like 3D Secure only work if the merchant supports it. I still regularly encounter shops that don't trigger the 3D Secure prompt at all.

Setting weird rewards/cash back things aside, which is the main incentive for folks to use it over debit card in most places:

It's not fully unnecessary step in-between when fraud is involved.

If someone hacks you/deceives you and somehow they got $5000 from your debit card, then your bank account is $5000 smaller. That can impact your ability to pay rent, or whatever you needed those $5000 for.

If it's via credit card, you have a decent amount of time to contest and resolve the issue.

the disputed amount should effectively be removed from your balance or offset by a temporary provisional credit until the investigation is completed

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.

A lot of people in the UK use credit cards for the extra legal protections, and for cash back and reward schemes.

The UK has pay by bank, which is very like digital cash, and can be used online, but its much less used than cards are.

You are of course free to extrapolate your experience from a single European country to the whole continent, but it's still not a coherent argument for or against anything.

I did

> The main difference between credit cards in Europe and in the US is that poor people can't get them here.

Nah, really the main difference is that the EU caps interchange (paid ultimately by the merchant) at 0.3%, whereas it can be upwards of 3% in the US for high-end cards. Without big interchange earnings, there's little reason for issuers to push credit cards, and they're less attractive to consumers (interchange pays for 'reward' schemes).

I was denied credit card after changing jobs. I did have some student debt, but small amount on small payment and rates were low. Also had other credit card but not high limit. Nothing in negative credit history.

Did get the same card a few months later after probationary period. But yeah even without significant existing debt you can get denied in Europe.

Let's not pretend that predatory lending is not a thing in at least some EU countries as well, just because it takes other forms (installment payments, buy now pay later etc.), but as a general trend, I'd agree that it's much less common.

Switch merged with Maestro, which was owned by Mastercard, to become Switch-Maestro, which eventually became Mastercard Debit.

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).

Custom in Europe - where debit cards are the most common - is to settle the hotel bill on check-in.

Obviously. Because why would a rental company turn down > 90% of the customers?

The legislation has been in the works for years now (not fully approved just yet). It’s why many US banks all are trying to get around issuers any way possible now.

https://www.redbridgedta.com/us/market-intelligence/the-visa...

I am admittedly having trouble finding where I’ve seen it brought up, but some online forums I lurk on for finance have had stories of people being denied from using specifically Visa Infinite branded credit cards. There’s also been stories of businesses not accepting Chase cards flat out, which I assume is to also curb the higher costs they incur from the premium Chase cards.

Europe has long had laws in place that have hard caps set at 0.3% and 0.2% respectively for credit or debit cards. The US has been milking this with uncapped 3.0%+ fees, which is why the credit cards there drive so much profit - at the expense of every business owner.

The EU has less democratic accountability than I would like, but it is there. National governments have been brought down over their poor choices at the EU level. Even if you think Visa/MC made the right decisions in these cases, the fact that they're being made by private companies accountable to no-one should worry you.

That seems like a rather big statement to make without anything to back it up.

The exact technical details aren’t terribly relevant imho, just that the EU has found the will to implement a superior value storage and transfer system, a benefit of which is avoiding US entities and infra. I have intentionally simplified for the layman audience, and understand if you take issue with my simplification.

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.

100%.

My colleague's father runs medical store. He apparently cooks the books too.

> why EU doesn’t try and develop a homegrown card provider? It would provide exactly what MC/Visa does

They have. A combination of petty squabbling and the lack of any real value proposition has always killed it. To have any chance of succeeding in the EU a new system needs to be something that no-one currently provides, because consumers are unlikely to adopt something that isn't clearly better than what they currently have, but more importantly no EU country is going to adopt a different EU country's system.

Taking a card away from the table is weird for us because it's not what we do here so it becomes suspicious. Even so skimming is much less of a problem since chip and pin were introduced. Nobody I know has had any issues with fraud. We also require 2fa for online purchases.

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.

US card fraud rate is significantly higher than in the EU. In 2015 it was about 0.042% in the EU, vs 0.1388% for the US. The 2021 rates for the EU fell to ~0.028%.

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.

It's seem completely crazy to me to give your card to a waiter.

Yes, because handing over your card to a stranger is considered a fairly crazy thing to do in most countries other than the US, as cards require PIN entry for most transactions (which actually does meaningfully prevent in-person card fraud).

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).

> One quick example is that the Europeans get very nervous when the waiter takes the credit card away from the table in the U.S.. This is just not done in Europe because there is a (at least perceived) history of skimming in much of Europe.

... 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.

> why not a traditional, homegrown card that is a direct 1-to-1 alternative of MC/Visa cards

Because the European market is fragmented. France, Italy, Germany, etc all have some sort of established localized payment system and in some states like Ireland and the Netherlands are entirely dependent on Visa.

There is no "pan-European" bank and individual states still care about their sovereignity. France will continue to back and support BNP and Credit Agricole against Germany's Deutsche Bank (and vice versa). The only solution at that point is to just bypass the whole problem and just go directly with mobile payments.

Additionally, China, India, and Brazil began building their DPD stack in the 2000s but European states didn't start until the last 2-3 years.

That's why i said "bank cash maahines", for want of a better word.

Can you say that a bit more clearly? What's your practical suggestion?

I don't think anywhere does. In general, cards in Europe don't really give significant rewards (because interchange, paid ultimately by the merchant, is capped at 0.3%, whereas in the US it can be upwards of 3% for certain high-end cards). The only reason that people who don't need the credit line use them in the US is the rewards schemes.

That's not what GP said. They claimed that "everyone" in Europe uses debit cards, and that's just not true.

I’m European and protection laws are nice to have but if a shop doesn’t refund you those laws don’t automatically give you your money back. That is where a credit-card comes in handy. I don’t know any bank that offers this protection on a debit-card.

The bank, at least all of mine, will ask for proof that you tried to resolve it first with the seller, so that is why I believe.

I've seen VISA cards with several banks in France where there is commission after 1 to 3 monthly ATM so I'd be doubtful about VISA having such as requirement.

That doesn't help you if the ATM provider charges you, though?

Among the middle and higher as well.

Can't go into debt if you don't have a line of credit.

The difference is more a financial or legal thing, than a technical one.

From an users' perspective paying with digital Euro would work more-or-less the same as you pay today with card, bank transfer or something based on QR codes. But it will have very different guarantees and trusts behind the scene.

Today you don't really think about keeping your money in a bank and paying with card as a different thing than having physical cash, because banks and payment services have very strict regulations and insurance schemes. Banks rarely goes bankrupt and even if they do, most of the people are not affected, because they get back their money from deposit insurance.

Banks can create money from thin air (without the approval of the central bank) and lend it to you (and destroy when you pay your loan back), they can not do that with Digital Euro.

Everybody would be able to convert all their Digital Euro to banknotes at the same time, but that would bankrupt any commercial bank.

Banks can deny your request to open an account or provide payment services to you (e.g. what happened with the ICC judge), you can own Digital Euro without having a bank account.

Banks pay interest for using your money (and the risk you take), this could even be negative that means some people even willing to loose money if they can have Euro instead of their original currency. Banks wouldn't be able to use your Digital Euro, you wouldn't get any interest on it.

Digital Euro (the same way as physical cash), is a legal tender, money in bank and card payments are not.

The value of Digital Euro doesn't depend on your bank, the numbers on your bank account could worth nothing if your bank goes bankrupt, central banks can not go bankrupt.

Digital Euro (for a limited amount) could be exchanged directly between two peers like physical cash (offline, without connection to internet or any bank).

we dont in spain, we call it "tarjeta de debito" and "tarjeta de credito" or just "la tarjeta" or the card.

That's a common misconception. Credit score is positively correlated with paying on time, having high available credit relative to usage, and the age of your oldest credit account.

However, using more of your cards' limit (a high debt utilization ratio) actually reduces your score.

On-time payments are only one factor in your score. Depending on the model it may only account for 20-30% of the score. Using your cards a few times a year may satisfy the criteria. You don't have to take on any debt to have a high credit score.

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 expecting that).

India has about a billion debit cards, but people mostly use them for ATM cash withdrawals, if that (banks used to give them by default during account opening, but have stopped this since UPI came into the picture). Only a single-digit percentage of people use credit cards, but they use them often and for relatively high-value transactions. The rewards game in the credit card space is slowly but surely reaching US levels, and they are associated more with stability and credit-worthiness since banks don't hand them out like candy, and India is, until recently, a debt-averse nation to revolve balances.

Mostly people use UPI, which is equivalent to debit cards given that amounts go directly from one bank to another. But UPI also supports some credit cards and lines, so there's that.

Yeah, it's uncommon, but bank wire does exist, and while (like cheques) it's typically used for paying rent / utilities / sending money to non-businesses, it does seem to become more common since it was improved to be 'instant' ?

What are you talking about? When have you last been to Europe!? Of course you can pay with debit cards all over Europe, every card terminal accepts them!

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!

As long as you don't go too far below zero, payments will go through. This may differ a bit per country.

The headline is probably written for an American audience, or for brevity.

It should say "Digital euro clears key hurdle as EU seeks to break free from U.S. debit and credit card processors". Most debit cards in the EU are either Visa or Mastercard, although there used to be more local/national systems.

European banks offer the credit, but the payments infrastructure currently goes through US companies. The first step is to get those payment processors out of the picture.

In Brazil, which is further along in the transition to digital cash, PIX already supersedes debit cards. Some banks already offer deferred PIX payments, wherein the merchant receives the money right away and the buyer pays their bank later, with interest. The central bank is also developing a "pix with guarantee", which will compete with credit cards: payment would be agreed to be settled at a later date, with the bank guaranteeing that the merchant will receive the money.

Debit cards usually also use the Mastercard or Visa payment networks.

Even though I and the supermarket I go to are both part of SEPA and I can issue a bank transfer that will clear ~instantly, today cashless payments still involve EMV for various reasons.

Most debit card usage is via Visa or Mastercard, is the problem.

Debit cards are also mostly visa/mastercard.

Debit cards also use Visa and Mastercard

They mean reliance on US bank cards.

That network still exists, and can now even be used preferentially over Visa/MasterCard, in particular when paying online.

That is not correct. You may be thinking of a prepaid card or something like vpay. Debit cards are accepted practically everywhere.

I live in Europe and been to many countries, only have a debit card, so not sure what you are talking about here.

Unless they have a direct agreement with a credit card company, most payment providers will give one-size-fits-all blended rate about 2.7% per transaction, even if it's debit.

I've had a high score with only credit cards and low usage.

In many European countries, "anybody" can take money out of your account, but you can return a direct debit for up to 13 weeks in case of unauthorized payments, and for 8 weeks for no reason whatsoever (including you just feeling like spending the money on something else).

Practically, the bank allowing a merchant to submit direct debits takes on significant credit risk as a result, so they grant that permission pretty carefully, similarly to how card processing merchant accounts require some level of trust.

Financially, they're not equivalent. If you buy your bread on credit, you get an interest-free loan, and benefit from the time value of the money that you otherwise would have paid immediately. As you correctly point out, this value comes from those fleeced by the arrangement. If my comment attributed any moral valence to the two options, that was unintentional.

Banks suck it up, but fraud is likely a lot less prevalent because 3D Secure is mandatory for online transactions and chip and PIN were ubiquitous way before the US seemed to have started using it.

2FA on online transactions, secure PIN authentication for in-person purchases.

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.

Yes, I think most people have several accounts, or at least a main and a "spare money" account. If you can prove a fraud the law mandates the bank to back it up. In EU bank apps there are often many warnings and popups when authorizing a transaction. Also in EU you can get a refund of any digitally made purchase, by law you can send back the item for 30 days.

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.

SEPA Direct debit still has a confirmation from the account holder. You usually see the pending transaction before it clears and can block it. Some banks (dreadful and hated bunq for example) require an active confirmation from the account holder before it is allowed to clear. Some have a setting hidden somewhere that sets the policy to autoaccept or something else.

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.

Never had fraud on my credit or debit cards, and with 3D Secure it's difficult to pull off (basically 2FA for all online credit card purchases).

But I did have someone fraudulently making direct debit transfers from my bank account. My bank cleaned that up within three business days

can you give an example of being defrauded? I don't really know what people mean when they say that.

The only place I (as an EU citizen) ever came in contact with direct fraud was in... US.

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.

I don't think people keep all their money on a single account. I have 20 in my bank (different savings, some foreign currency accounts, etc.), and only one is tied to my debit card. I move money there when I need it. Opening another account number is just few clicks away. There is a limit for it also.

Single account sounds more like a boomer thing.

> And Ireland seems similar to the US when it comes to credit card usage (vs debit).

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).

I am Irish and in my experience most people use debit cards these days. I have a credit card but almost never use it.

The largest payment systems in the world, in China [1] [2], India [3], Brazil's Pix [4] etc, leverage QR codes and other non card primitives for moving value. You can encode EMV [5] in a QR code [6].

> 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?

To avoid US government control of your payments and US corporate payment processor extraction of value via your payment flows. How do you avoid someone else controlling your infra? You instantiate, operate, and maintain your own infra. Brazil runs their instant payment system Pix for ~$10M/year, for example. The cost is very reasonable to do so.

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/AskAChinese/comments/1qgq6ya/why_di...

[2] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/chinas-digital-payments-r...

[3] https://easebuzz.in/explainers/upi/upi-qr-code/

[4] https://dev.to/woovi/how-does-pix-qrcode-work-5e3k

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMV

[6] https://www.w3.org/2020/Talks/emvco-qr-20201021.pdf

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 and only taking what they're owed out of your account without your confirmation?

Of course physical cards will also play some role in any future EU payment system, if for nothing other than resiliency (a card works without any battery and is cheap to keep in a drawer or suitcase as a backup for a stolen phone) and sovereignty (note who makes most phones' operating systems and runs their attestation providers).

Which country is your debit card issued to?

Maybe it’s specific to Germany, France

That is not going to help if:

- someone steals your card and PIN

- the merchant turns out to be dishonest (or some misunderstanding) and you want you money back

- you fall for fraud

- the merchant mistakenly charges you, causing an overdraft on your checking account

I would argue the opposite, makes no sense to pay right away when you can pay with no interest 15 days later on average.

In an inflationary fiat currency system it's always better to defer payment assuming you can manage your cashflow and you're living hand to mouth

Well in some cases paying with a credit card is the only option.

As a US-ian I feel exactly that way when using a debit card.

A credit card, if misused, can run up your balance and then you dispute, and don't pay anything until it's resolved. A debit card, if misused, can drain your account and leave you penniless until it's resolved.

Pretty much all of the EU had Visa- and Mastercard-branded debit cards since the turn of the millennium, so one has been able to buy stuff from the net and travel abroad without use of a credit card for decades now.

In US, maybe. In Turkey before the general election in 2023 the rates were kept so ridiculously low that you could have taken cash out of your CC and put the money in the savings account in the same bank and make money out of the arbitrage. Everyone did it, having good credit meant license to print free money, IIRC it was %2-%3 per month tax free net profit on the credit you took on your CC limit.

Sure, but the fees I pay for go to Visa for, among others, combatting fraud and credit card cloning. I filled up my bank’s paperwork, I don’t know the inner details of their relationship with Visa.

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...

Some Europeans meaning people in Germany? Most people have debit cards from our normal banks here, credit cards are generally associated with companies like Revolut or Klarna, as they push ads for getting credit cards.

It 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.

Cards and accounts often allow the owner to set those limits for e.g. withdrawals or transfers etc. There's often a separate limit for home country and abroad. They're there to limit damage that might be caused by user error or stolen cards or something like that. (Or just to provide peace of mind.)

Wells Fargo for the longest time had a daily spending limit on its Check Cards and a daily withdrawal limit. If you had a Debit (not check card) your “spending limit” was your withdrawal limit.

If you tried to make a purchase above the spending limit it was a hassle. I am old tho.

> the lag time between hitting the button and getting your money back can be weeks.

Nope, it's as soon as the bank is aware. In your rush to correct me, you failed to understand that there are simply better customers protection here which make a product such as a credit card mostly useless.

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 their additional liability protections (largely motivated by considerations of brand perception, which would suffer if the same logo sometimes confers weaker protections).

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.

The risk isn't bank transfers to your bank for your mortgage. The risk is card skimmers at a gas station or whatever. The theft isn't when you pay your rent, the theft is something preventing you from paying your rent, due to some totally unrelated prior transaction.

I think the risk is higher in the US compared to Europe because Europe was way faster to roll out chip stuff, whereas in the US it's still somewhat common to have to use the mag stripe.