[ale] OT: I AM paranoid!

[James P. Kinney III]

On Fri, 2003-10-10 at 10:37, Geoffrey wrote:
> I believe you are not correct.  When you use it as a Visa card, (no pin 
> entry, usually), it goes through the Visa network.  When you use it as a 
> debit card, it does not go through the Visa network, that's why debits 
> show up faster on your statement.  Further, this is why Walmart and 
> other companies want you to use it as a debit card, because when you use 
> it as a Visa card, they have to pay the Visa charges associated with the 
> transaction.
> 
> I picked this up from Clark Howard a while back, so it's got to be true. ;)

As I am looking at the costs involved in receiving credit/debit card
payments from clients, the credit card is much more expensive (AMEX is
outrageous!). The debit card is around half the cost of the credit card
to get paid with. As the cost and risk is lower, many Mom-n-Pop stores
are taking debit card payments but not credit card payments. The
merchant can't get a charge back from a debit card like they can with a
credit card. The authorization is a payment record.

The real downside to this is there are no Linux packages yet that can
handle debit card transactions for POS stuff yet. Plenty of credit card
POS tools as the technology has been around longer.

Well. I haven't found any yet, at least.

Thanks for all the feedback on my erroneous understanding of
credit/debit card liability. I'll be leaving my debit card in the safe
from now on. It's not quite as potentially troublesome as the campus
cash cards!

-- 
James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
CEO & Director of Engineering \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC        \           at a time.          /
770-493-8244                    \.___________________________./
http://www.localnetsolutions.com

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
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