While your waiting for your fraud process to finish, you don't have money in the bank. Also as you said, more fraud liability is shifted to card holders, so if someone stole your pin then it's even more pain.
While with a credit card, you do still have money in the bank and less instances where you are assumed to be the liable person.
Also culturally in the USA it's a common feeling that debit is not as good or the consequences are more dire with debit cards and fraud.
Bank balances are very important for most Americans to avoid late fees and so on to pay their bills, while you can hypothetically walk away from a credit card debt.
Card companies decided that the friction & support burden that PIN entry gives is not worth the revenue decrease vs. the cost of fraud AFAIK.
IMO I want push permissioned payments and not have this basically auth-free pull system of payments, but that wont happen for a long time. Subscriptions should be a subscription request send to a card, you approve in your bank app and then you can cancel unilaterally on your side on you app. None of this pull crap. Same with tap to pay.
> While your waiting for your fraud process to finish, you don't have money in the bank.
In many circumstances, banks are required to either resolve the issue quickly or provisionally credit you in case of disputes. Fraud liability is also limited by regulation, in addition to card scheme rules and bank policies:
> Also culturally in the USA it's a common feeling that debit is not as good or the consequences are more dire with debit cards and fraud.
I suspect that it's primarily that: Common knowledge with a lot of truth to it, but not entirely up to date and correct in many instances. Germany obviously has a lot of that as well, but with very different axioms leaving to very different outcomes in terms of guidance and behavior ("only cash is real money", "debt is bad/a moral failure" etc.)
> Card companies decided that the friction & support burden that PIN entry gives is not worth the revenue decrease vs. the cost of fraud AFAIK.
The problem is that due to market dynamics (leaving aside card scheme rules for the moment), it's really not up to individual banks to change that. The first bank to introduce a PIN on their credit card would lose a lot of purchases to their competitors due to convenience, forgotten PINs etc.
In Europe, it took heavy regulation to get banks to use 3DS – the dynamics there in terms of a first-mover disadvantage were very similar, and the existing (significant!) financial incentives were not enough.
> IMO I want push permissioned payments and not have this basically auth-free pull system of payments, but that wont happen for a long time. Subscriptions should be a subscription request send to a card, you approve in your bank app and then you can cancel unilaterally on your side on you app. None of this pull crap. Same with tap to pay.
The various stakeholders (card schemes, regulators, banks) are well aware of that customer demand. This industry is one full of legacy technology, and it'll take a while, but I think we'll get there eventually.
While with a credit card, you do still have money in the bank and less instances where you are assumed to be the liable person.
Also culturally in the USA it's a common feeling that debit is not as good or the consequences are more dire with debit cards and fraud.
Bank balances are very important for most Americans to avoid late fees and so on to pay their bills, while you can hypothetically walk away from a credit card debt.
Card companies decided that the friction & support burden that PIN entry gives is not worth the revenue decrease vs. the cost of fraud AFAIK.
IMO I want push permissioned payments and not have this basically auth-free pull system of payments, but that wont happen for a long time. Subscriptions should be a subscription request send to a card, you approve in your bank app and then you can cancel unilaterally on your side on you app. None of this pull crap. Same with tap to pay.