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Originally Posted by Curious
i am confused. you said the grocery which doesn't accept credit card or check...what do you pay with if not cash?
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Good Morning World.
Such a lovely sunny sunday morning here.
Hey curious,
My Debit card and my Visa Debit card are two separate cards but work on the same account.
If I don't have cash at the grocery store, then I can use my Debit card. It comes automatically with my savings account. Just key in the right account, (i.e. savings - not cheque or credit) and key in password and bob's your uncle. If I go to hire a car or wanted to buy airline tickets or some such thing (I wish!!!) then I would not be able to use my Debit card. I would need to dig out my Visa Debit Card and that would go through a completely different form of processing but would work in the same manner as a Credit Card.
Most places here will hold the transaction in limbo... meaning if you need to make a deposit to a company such as a Car Rental firm (just example) then you would need to give either Credit or Debit Visa card (both work) and they will then process the paperwork in front of you, but actually hold it rather than put it through to the bank. Then at the end of the car rental period you go back and they just rip up the transaction slip.
Edited to add another couple of thoughts:
Most of the time I don't need actual cash in my wallet. Most of the time I can swipe debit card (not visa debit card) however, some places don't do EFTPOS but they're rare to find these days. Usually very small cafés and juice bars... places like that which either don't take EFTPOS or they do only over a certain quantity of money ... like $20. If I just want a tea or coffee then I need to carry a little cash all the time just in case.
There was something else I was going to say but I've forgotten. lol
OH, I remember now.
I was going to say that a Debit Card (not Visa Debit) works the same basically as a Cheque book in that it withdraws money from your account. Many places won't take Cheques here anymore though.
Debit Card will also work in ATMs. Although the cost of making a withdrawal is getting very expensive. Lots of banks here are getting rid of staff and some banks actually charge you to make transactions at the counter with a "real person". Some banks also have limits on amount of free transactions and I think that all of them charge if you use another bank's ATM. They're all robbers!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debit_card
Quote:
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Australia operates both electronic credit card transaction authorization and traditional EFTPOS debit card authorization systems. The difference between the two being that EFTPOS transactions are authorized by a personal identification number (PIN) while credit card transactions are usually authorized by the printing and signing of a receipt.
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[Note: of course Visa is only one of the types of cards there is. There are others. I am just using that one as my example because that's the one I know.]