Visa and MC have basicly all of these configurations, depending on country & legislation: - Direct Debit - Deffered Debit - Rolling Credit - Installment Credit

And if you are a $MegaBigCorp customer of them, you can customize even more.

indeed. my credit card requires me to preload money from my bank account. it's like there is a second account that keeps a balance that i can spend using the credit card. whenever i use it, the balance is updated. how the credit is paid off i don't know. it could be either right away, or the amount is just hidden by my bank until it is time to pay off at the end of the month. either way, the credit limit is zero. so i can never spend more than i put in first. (though this may be based on how much i spend or be a configurable value.)

So, your credit card is in practice a debit card?

yes. it is possible that i can get a real credit limit too, but i didn't check.

these debit like credit cards put a different light on the statistics. as some people here have said, europeans don't use creditcards, and then someone contradicted that with a statistic of how much is paid with credit cards. how much of those credit card payments are made with debit like cards like mine?

europe doesn't want their people to get into credit debt. possibly protection for people is stronger and makes it harder for banks to recover if people fail to pay? but most likely countries just want people to be able to protect themselves from overspending.

like i can get an overdraw limit on my bank account. it is set to a default value based on my income. but i deliberately reset that to zero. i don't want an overdraw limit. if i really need to overdraw i'll change the limit at that time and i think i can even set that it is valid only for a short time and then it resets automatically.

that is not a credit card :)

There is a point though - Mastercard and Visa treats them as "prepaid" credit cards, which are different from both true prepaid cards (as issued in the US), charge cards, and true debit cards (former Maestro and Visa Electron). Again, different regions have different lines for this, especially in Europe.

IIRC, bunq in the Netherlands issues Mastercard "credit cards" (with no "debit" annotation as on true Mastercard debit cards). They're treated as credit cards for Mastercard purposes but are backed by deposits.

it is what i get when i ask my bank for a credit card. it says credit card on it, and it is what i use when a credit card is called for.

as i said, it is possible that i can actually get a real credit limit on the card, or possibly the bank has other credit card products.

It's more taboo to talk about revolving credit card than crack addiction for a french. I don't know a bank that offer them, even the shady online bank.

Historically, these have been issued by "consumer credit" specialized banks like Sofinco; and retail chains ("carte Aurore"); traditional banks would seldom advertise them, if offered at all.

Things have been changing a bit in recent years. Since the "debit" and "credit" nature of the card is now written on them, French folks have started to request "credit" ones for travelling (to rent a car for instance).

My understanding is that for car rental purposes, anything using Visa/MC (and not a national debit network like Visa Debit in the US) will work, it doesn't actually need to be backed by a revolving credit. At a US gas pump, a Frenchie needs to select "credit" even though the card has "debit" written on it. Still, should the clerk refuse the card because it reads "debit" without running it... better have this "credit"-labeled one.

> My understanding is that for car rental purposes, anything using Visa/MC (and not a national debit network like Visa Debit in the US) will work, it doesn't actually need to be backed by a revolving credit.

Many companies will refuse all debit cards, or all cards with "electronic use only" restriction, at least for the deposit, irrespective of the payment network involved.

Why would they do that? Are there differences in chargeback risks?

Too bad that doesn't extend to their government, which seems to have no problem spending their credit down to the wire...

These are historically called “charge cards” in the US and are common for corporations who give employees “credit cards” for travel and the like.

American Express is big in this market - what looks like a normal Amex Business Platinum card can very well be a charge card that needs to be paid in full at the due date every month.

There are minor differences but the big one is no carried balance between months is allowed. Payment in full due each month.