[illiac786]

Where do you live in Europe? This has simply not been my experience at all in France, Germany, UK, Italy and Spain so far. Online shops most of all don’t take debit at all and bricks and mortar shops will accept credit more often than debit. Again, my experience. And I prefer to pay with debit because I know the shop will pay less fees. I get refused at Starbucks, random shops in train stations, etc.

[verzali]

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

[illiac786]

Do you really pay online, like flight tickets, with your debit card, that works? I try regularly, it never works.

In shops the main issue is that the terminal they use can only read Apple Pay credit cards. If you’re using you’re banking app to pay wirelessly, it may fail to work with some merchants.

It’s not that they don’t want to accept it, the physical card would probably work (I don’t physical cards anymore), but the system is rigged to favor credit cards it seems.

[rsynnott]

> Do you really pay online, like flight tickets, with your debit card, that works? I try regularly, it never works.

Which country is your card from? Many countries used to have their own weird debit card schemes, which often worked... erratically online. This is now rare, and even where it persists (eg Germany, with girocard), cards tend to be dual branded.

[BlueTemplar]

I never had a credit card. I cannot remember having an issue paying with debit cards.

[illiac786]

Which country is your debit card issued to?

Maybe it’s specific to Germany, France

[BlueTemplar]

It is. I guess that it's more of an issue for banks in smaller countries ? (But how come SEPA is not more widely used even for B2C sales then ?)

Sounds like the digital euro might also have been designed to help with these issues ?

[Hikikomori]

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

[freediddy]

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.

[rsynnott]

This is incorrect; 2.7% sounds like a US merchant fee. Most payment providers have considerably lower fees for EU merchants. Larger merchants can generally get lower fees by negotiating with their payment provider (this is the case for both EU and US merchants). Having direct agreement with a network _is_ somewhat a thing, but mostly in the US, where the network's fees are less regulated.

[illiac786]

You’re talking about scheme or interchange fees? In any case, it’s much lower. I think only business cards are still an exception in Germany. Interchange fees are capped at .2 or .3% and scheme fees are much smaller.

I use a German bankcard and it will cost less to the merchant, that is the reason credit card were refused for such a long time. Covid broke this, as contactless was preferred and bankcard were not available for payment on smartphones at the time.

[l23k4]

They might be talking about a girocard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girocard