Not at all. Almost every commercial transaction at the retail level allows you to use a method of payment that does not guarantee that the seller will actually receive that money (credit cards). You order food for pickup, and the great majority of restaurants will let you walk in and pick a bag off an unattended table without any attempt to verify that you did in fact order what you're taking; and anecdotally, I've never had my order be taken by somebody else, accidentally or otherwise.
The US is a high trust society.
Your ability to get a line of credit hinges upon an invasive scoring system that tallies your creditworthiness by a multi-billion dollar opaque bureaucracy.
When you go to buy something at the retail level, you're watched by dozens of cameras that record you from the second you drive into the parking lot. When you go to use those credit cards, cameras from every angle imaginable are in your face, and sometimes literally right in front of your face, so there is no ambiguity about who is making purchases and what payment methods they're using. One purpose these cameras serve is to collect evidence in case a customer should open a dispute with their creditor or do a charge back, and another is to collect evidence for criminal charges and prosecution. Retailers will share the video and other data they collect on "problem customers" with other retailers to use as they please. Also, if you use cash and pay with bills above $20, they'll either be denied or checked for forgery.
I've also shopped at retailers where I didn't fit the image of their ideal customers, and have been followed around by employees and owners. You don't feel much trust in that type of situation.
(Granted, these days that piece of paper gets run through Telecheck or whatever, so the risk has gone way down that last few decades.)
That's not how credit cards work. At all.
>You order food for pickup, and the great majority of restaurants will let you walk in and pick a bag off an unattended table without any attempt to verify that you did in fact order what you're taking
I have literally never seen this once in my life. Where do you live where the "great majority" of restaurants operate this way?
>That's not how credit cards work. At all.
Not the OP, but that's exactly how cards work. When a card is swiped the seller doesn't receive the funds until possibly days later. There is absolutely no guarantee that the seller will actually receive that money, since it can be disputed or charged-back.
In case of a stolen credit card, it's 100% the merchant who pays (that's why they're called charge-"backs"). The only exceptions are if the transactions are indemnified by a third party partner.
All the card brands have multiple chargeback codes for fraudulent transactions, even card-present ones, so the fact that the credit card was physically present is not some kind of guarantee that the merchant would win a chargeback representment.
This is laughable, as North America has the lowest chargeback rate of all the global regions. This is just biased and ignorant anecdata.
> It is only a problem in a society with a high level of crime and little or no consequences.
If you're going to make nasty anti-American claims, you should at least back it up with real data. The facts are that chargebacks are a bigger source of fraud loss outside of North America than inside it.
> Even if people did do so they would be punished quickly.
This is not how credit card fraud works.
It does seem like there are some people here who think they know how credit cards work but actually have no idea.
Further, "Annual Ecommerce Revenue Spent to Manage Payment Fraud" was 9% in Europe, 12% in Latin America, and 15% in APAC. It was only 5% in North America.
[1]: https://merchantriskcouncil.org/resource-center/surveys/2021...
we don't need personal trust because there is systems trust.
japan is a high personal trust system that obviates the need for high systems trust. insolvency proceedings in japan for example rely on private proceedings, social and familial relationships, instead of formal remediation. without the need for high systems trust, there is a virtually non-existent (high-yield) credit market, because companies don't "fail" in japan in the way we traditionally think of credit failures, and the outcomes of a credit event is non-standard and very difficult to predict. furthermore, if you are an outsider to the personal trust system, it is very difficult to fully participate in society.
We chose this path. (Or at least, someone did.) There were explicit tradeoffs where we burned social capital in exchange for a bit of cash, and now the costs are coming due.
The US is a low trust society. You can feel it in all aspects of life. Companies are very controlling and feel the need to constantly monitor their employees, people assume the worst from strangers and are afraid to go to places they don't know.
I myself am getting more and more worried when I talk to a doctor because I have seen it now several times how people got screwed over by doctors, hospitals and health insurance.