With a debit card you’re relying on the bank’s good will. With a credit card it’s the law.

Also with credit you can dispute it before you pay it. With debit you’re trying to fix it up after your paid it.

> With a debit card you’re relying on the bank’s good will. With a credit card it’s the law.

Can't emphasize this enough!

It is true that many banks do offer fraud protections on their debit cards. But those are just a choice by the bank. They can at any moment stop or withdraw those protections and then you're out of luck.

With a credit card, the protections are written into regulation, so every bank must follow them and can't change the terms.

It's almost as if the law is setup to let people make bad choices with money they don't actually have so that some value can be extracted from them later.

Like it or not protecting people costs money, with credit cards banks have an opportunity to potentially recoup that, otherwise they don't do that at all or only do it when they can afford it.

Really the primary disadvantage these days is that you won't be able to access that part of your bank balance (often lower than most credit limits) for a bit of time until the bank either issues you a temporary credit or the dispute is resolved. This happened to me once in the earlier half of the 2010s and it was frustrating to have to wait for my balance to get restored.

There are enough banks in the US nowadays that cover debit fraud that any bank that doesn't do it will really stick out like a sore thumb and eventually lose their customers.

Even if things are taken care of in the end, with debit fraud the money leaves your bank account immediately and then it is up to you to make sure you get it back.

With credit card fraud it won't get to the point -- you dispute the charges before paying them back.

Exactly. $10k skimmed out of my bank account is a huge problem for me while it gets resolved. $10k skimmed off a credit card, eh, I'm never that close to my limits anyway