As an outsider: which countries lean which way? I'm curious how things trend where and I didn't even really know that debit was used by a majority in certain places (Countries? Regions? Historical based delimiters?).
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).
The preferential treatment of credit cards for certain transactions influences how they're used in the UK.
Suppose in January two people Carol and Dave bought a £250 August flight to Paris from some outfit that didn't do a great job hedging their fuel prices. Carol used her credit card, Dave used his Debit card. UK law says Carol's flight was bought by her bank, after all her bank handed over the money, Carol is on the hook to pay them back but didn't directly pay. But Dave bought his ticket, the bank isn't responsible.
Today the airline fails because their fuel costs blew up. UK law says Carol should be able to get her money back from the bank because they bought this ticket and now it won't work -- this is called "Section 75". Dave may have some protections via other consumer protection rules, but he's more likely to end up losing out.
The best chance for Dave might be "Chargeback" which is a card scheme which might let Dave tell his bank that he now wishes he didn't pay for the ticket. It's not very likely to work because January is a long time ago and so the bank will probably argue that Dave should have realised earlier that he didn't want to make this transaction. Because this flight touches the EU there are a bunch of extra protections which might help, none of them is as simple as Section 75.
The Section 75 protections mean Brits who are credit-worthy tend to pay for large purchases on a [credit] card even if they intend to pay it off immediately.
In the UK people predominantly use debit cards but credit cards are widely available. Everyone gets a debit card with any current account (i.e. non-savings account). In March this year there were 2.3 billion debit card transactions vs 400 million credit card transactions according to this:
It used to be like that in Germany, it changed quite a bit. My debit card now is refused more often than my master card when I’m in Germany. I do tend to stay in large cities and not in the country side though, so my perspective is not a statistic.
But it definitely changed massively during Covid. Before Covid shops refusing _any_ card where still common (again, large cities is my spectrum) and debit card were accepted vastly more often than credit card.
Some providers in the UK issue debit cards with limited interest-free overdraft and charge back features. So they are basically credit cards if you squint your eyes enough.
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).