Why do you need to choose (or tell the worker) “credit” or “debit” when paying for something by card? Are the two cards built differently?
In: Other
Credit is post-pay (You’re billed for it when your statement comes)
Debit is pre-pay (out of your checking account).
If you run a credit-card as debit, you will end up drawing a cash-advance with super-expensive interest that starts *immediately* after the transaction, rather than only after your statement date if you don’t pay it off.
Ever since chip cards came out it’s possible for the terminal to identify credit vs debit properly, but before that a button had to be pushed.
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