[incompatible]

Likewise in Australia. The only difficulty I've found using a debit card in recent years is when renting a car: with a debit card, they generally want to put a "hold" on the account for a few hundred dollars.

I can't get a credit card anyway since my income isn't high enough, and I wouldn't want one because they charge annual fees in Australia.

Banks in Australia run their own payments system, so it's possible to pay by card without going through Visa / Mastercard. Some cards issued by banks don't even have the Visa / Mastercard affiliation, but I think the Visa / Mastercard debit feature is needed it you want to make card-not-present transactions online.

[mcbain]

There are a number of credit cards in Australia that do not charge annual fees. Many require being linked to an active transaction account, but not all.

They generally don't have any kind of linked reward points structure, but that's not a huge loss as most of those got nerfed after the ACCC changes a while back (see elsewhere in these comments).

[incompatible]

I see there are some of these around these days, perhaps it wasn't so common last time I was looking which was at least 5 years ago. But at this point, there doesn't seem to be much benefit in having a credit card. I'd also be unlikely to qualify for one, either due to not having a stable income of $20k plus per year, or because I'm not a permanent visa holder in Australia, despite living here for over a decade.