Word: debits
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...million debit and credit cards - around a quarter of all those in circulation in Germany - have been rendered unreadable by the software bug, causing chaos across the country. The situation harks back to the fears over the so-called millennium bug, which many experts thought would cause computer systems around the world to crash when the year switched over from 1999 to 2000. The difference: the millennium bug turned out to be a false alarm. In Germany, the Year 2010 bug has left millions of people fuming at the ATM. (See the top 10 panics...
...consumer spending was way down, overdraft fees had become more profitable than traditional banking for half of America’s banks. After losing more than $300 million in the third quarter last year, Visa made a big push for its Visa check cards—basically just glorified debit cards—and recently announced netting more than $500 million this quarter...
...last time we got close to writing drastic regulation on credit or debit cards was in 1991, when 74 senators voted in favor of a 14 percent interest-rate cap on credit cards. George H. W. Bush had given a fundraising speech in New York where he talked about lowering credit-card rates, a bullet point that had been included at the last minute by his chief of staff but hadn’t been approved by his economic advisors. Support from a Republican president lent congressional Democrats the air cover to move a bill that received no more than...
Some Americans, and certainly the banks, don’t see a need for tighter regulation of credit and/or debit cards. If people can’t stop themselves from spending money at the mall, they should have to suffer the consequences, even if the shape those consequences might take is never entirely clear. That’s one theory. Another line of reasoning: Much of what governs people’s behavior when it comes to credit and debit cards are poorly designed rules, which allow things like overdraft services to systematically take advantage of people?...
...system requires banks to clearly explain overdraft charges to their consumers, and it also requires permission to offer the service in the first place. Requiring permission will make the customer a more active participant in the process of acquiring and, yes, understanding the use of a debit card—an essential step in liberating huge numbers of Americans from the confusion that has all too often translated into customer abuse...