That's interesting argument. Here it is usual to have a daily limit on debit cards. You can not spend more money than that, so a thief can not drain your account. Also many banks give you multiple accounts (you can transfer between them instantly). The debit card is connected to only one of them, so if you keep part of your money on the other account, that couldn't be touched even if the card payment limit has technical issues.
Multiple accounts (both debit and credit) are normal in the US as well, but I have never heard of a debit account here that has a daily spending limit.
Sounds like the US and Euro systems work fine within their own borders. Solutions designed for one make less sense in the context of the other.
It gets interesting when the two system interacts. Friends visiting the US told me that at the POS terminal they had to choose credit card despite paying with a Visa/Mastercard debit card issued by an European bank.
By the way, here banks even have daily bank / wire transfer limit that can be changed only by a personal visit to a branch, so even if your online banking credentials are stolen, the attacker can not empty your account.
And that doesn’t always work. For example, at a Chevron petrol station in California in the middle of nowhere we tried several European credit and debit cards, and nothing worked. At the end, the guy working there helped us with some prepaid option at the counter. He didn’t believe us until he tried himself that really none of our cards worked.
But the situation is way better than 5+ years ago. Back then, almost every second purchase of ours had some problem with our cards in the US. Now, we had like one or two in more than a week.
But of course, some car rental companies still pretend that they are generous that they allow debit cards. Not just in the US.
> Friends visiting the US told me that at the POS terminal they had to choose credit card despite paying with a Visa/Mastercard debit card issued by an European bank.
The "credit" button in the US really means "use the Visa/Mastercard network and don't ask me for a PIN", as opposed to "feel free to ask me for my PIN and route the transaction over one of a dozen or so US domestic debit networks". The question doesn't even make sense for non-US debit cards.
Cards and accounts often allow the owner to set those limits for e.g. withdrawals or transfers etc. There's often a separate limit for home country and abroad. They're there to limit damage that might be caused by user error or stolen cards or something like that. (Or just to provide peace of mind.)
Wells Fargo for the longest time had a daily spending limit on its Check Cards and a daily withdrawal limit. If you had a Debit (not check card) your “spending limit” was your withdrawal limit.
If you tried to make a purchase above the spending limit it was a hassle. I am old tho.
