Types of debit card by country

In France

Banks in France charge annual fees for debit cards (despite card payments being very cost efficient for the banks), yet they do not charge personal customers for chequebooks or processing cheques (despite cheques being very costly for the banks).

This imbalance most probably dates from the unilateral introduction in France of Chip and PIN debit cards in the early 1990s, when the cost of this technology was much higher than it is now.

Credit cards of the type found in the United Kingdom and United States are unusual in France and the closest equivalent is the deferred debit card, which operates like a normal debit card, except that all purchase transactions are postponed until the end of the month, thereby giving the customer between 1 and 31 days of interest-free credit. The annual fee for a deferred debit card is around €10 more than for one with immediate debit.

Most France debit cards are branded with the Carte Bleue logo, which assures acceptance throughout France. Most card holders choose to pay around €5 more in their annual fee to additionally have a Visa or a MasterCard logo on their Carte Bleue, so that the card is accepted internationally.

A Carte Bleue without a Visa or a MasterCard logo is often known as a "Carte Bleue Nationale" and a Carte Bleue with a Visa or a MasterCard logo is often known as a "Carte Bleue Internationale". Many smaller merchants in France refuse to accept debit cards for transactions under €15.25 (equivalent to 100 French Francs) because of the minimum fee charged by merchants' banks per transaction. Merchants in France do not differentiate between debit and credit cards, and so both have equal acceptance.

In the UK

In the United Kingdom, banks started to issue debit cards in the late 1980s in a bid to reduce the number of cheques being used at the point of sale, which are costly for the banks to process. As in most countries, fees paid by merchants in the United Kingdom to accept credit cards are a percentage of the transaction amount, which funds card holders' interest-free credit periods as well as incentive schemes such as points, airmiles or cashback.

On the contrary, debit cards do not usually have these characteristics, and so the fee for merchants to accept debit cards is a low fixed amount, regardless of transaction amount. This means it is cheaper for a merchant to accept a debit card for a large amount and to accept a credit card for a small amount. Although merchants won the right through The Credit Cards (Price Discrimination) Order 1990 to charge customers different prices according to the payment method, few merchants in the UK charge less for payment by debit card than by credit card, the most notable exceptions being budget airlines, travel agents and IKEA. Debit cards in the UK lack the advantages offered to holders of UK-issued credit cards, such as free incentives (points, airmiles, cashback etc), interest-free credit and protection against defaulting merchants under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974.

Despite these disadvantages of debit cards over credit cards, many people in the UK prefer paying with debit cards rather than credit cards, often because they fear that using credit cards will result in accumulation of unmanageable debts. Almost all establishments in the United Kingdom that accept credit cards also accept debit cards (although not always Solo and Visa Electron), but a minority of merchants, for cost reasons, accept debit cards and not credit cards (for example the Post Office).

In Germany and Belgium

In Germany and Belgium, many merchants, including most supermarkets, do not accept credit cards because of the higher fees charged by their banks. However, most merchants usually accept debit cards, because the fees for accepting them are much lower, for example in Germany 0.3% with a minimum of €0.08.

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