Media Questioning Debit Card Safety

Media
Questioning Debit Card Safety
As the use of bank debit cards grows in relation to the use
of credit cards, more cases of debit card fraud are popping
up. Debit cards have been touted as a smart way to control your
finances, but do they bring a higher risks of losing money via
fraud? A number of recent news reports have offered surprising
facts and useful advice for users of debit cards:
MSNBC
reporter Gayle B. Ronan, in a piece titled “Debit
or credit: Weighing the financial risks,” discusses
the fact that where credit cards won’t charge you more than
$50 for fraudulent use of your credit card if reported within
60 days, that same window for debit card fraud is usually only
48 hours. (The article also mentions that debit cards can overdraw
a bank account in the same way that people bounce checks, as
debit card transactions do not necessarily happen in real time.)
The
Charlotte News & Observer‘s Frank Norton, in the article
cards offer less security than credit cards,” reports
that debit cards offer fewer protections for consumers who want
to dispute a charge — and, unlike credit cards, in which you’re
disputing a charge you haven’t paid for yet, the money for debit
card purchases is already gone from your account.
USA
Today writer Kathy Chu offers this headline in the March
12th edition: “Security
breaks could curtail debit card use,” referring to
a number of incidences in which debit card information was hacked
from merchant databases. (Of course, credit card information
has often been stolen this way as well.)
And
in the March 20th issue of Newsweek, financial writer
Linda Stern asks “How
Good is Debit?” Stern notes not only the security aspects
of debit cards, but also extra fees some banks may tack on for
debit card transactions, and the weaker rewards programs offered
to debit users versus credit card customers.
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