how come credit card bills can be refunded, i.e if you get scammed the credit card company can reverse the transaction but a bank transaction cannot be reversed?

Question

how come credit card bills can be refunded, i.e if you get scammed the credit card company can reverse the transaction but a bank transaction cannot be reversed?

In: 154

Answer 1

The bottom line is that when credit cards first became widely available in the 1980’s there was a public fear of ending up stuck with fraudulent charges to their card. “Credit card fraud” was a common news story. So banks made the reversible transactions possible so that people would use the cards and pay interest on their (legit) charges.

People had already been using checking accounts for decades and didn’t have the same fears about those.

It all took off from there.