I never said "no one has a CC". I said "the large majority" don't have a credit card in Europe, which is entirely correct. So a business shouldn't count on it. Only 4 countries out of 24 on that map have a population where over 50% has a credit card. That's not "many", we call that "few". If you demand a Credit Card in Europe from your players, you're basically making it impossible for the majority of players to be your client. The yearly fee to get a VISA card in Europe is already 30 euro, and the bank of course requires a minimum deposit of 200+ euro to get one. This assumes the bank even agrees to give someone a credit card. I explained that convincing a bank to give you a VISA card is not easy in Europe, it is a lot harder nowadays. The ECB defines credit cards as liabilities for banks and actively advises against giving clients credit cards. Especially after the 2008 US financial crisis. If you look at the younger population in Europe, it would be impossible for most of them to use your service if it relied on credit cards. Look at any major gaming brand operating in Europe, and they all offer alternatives to VISA. Playstation, Ubisoft, Nintendo, none of them solely rely on VISA, that would destroy their business on the continent.
I looked up how the FED in the US defines credit cards. I know the ECB defines them as liabilities. Not very surprising, the San Francisco Fed defines credit card debt as high risk liabilities for banks too. Banks increasingly want people to switch to debit or direct online bank payments, they don't want you to live off credit. It's not good for you, it's not good for the bank. European banks just go much further in this, and they increasingly will not give people access to credit cards, which I think is not a bad thing. It avoids the whole living-paycheck-to-paycheck downward spiral that you see in the US where people live on borrowed credit until they run out and end up on the street.
I have been playing EQ on and off from release in the US till 2002, and from India since 2004. I played on Phinegel and Mischief. I always used a visa or a MasterCard credit card. Here Credit Card transactions also need a PIN. However, I have had no issues without PIN for SoE, DBG, DPG. Maybe check with your Bank for a one time usable Credit Card if available
Your problem is you are using old data. There are 12 countries with a credit card penetration over 50%. From 2021. From the World Bank: https://genderdata.worldbank.org/indicators/fin7-t-a/?gender=total
My wife and I get literally dozens of of offers for credit cards from US banks each month. And we are not at all unusual in this. I just don't see the trend you claim is going on in the US. For instance, our daughter, who is about to turn 18, has already received an offer for a credit card. We told her no, but the offer was still made. I agree with part of what you have said here. Americans as a group seem to be grossly addicted to credit. It makes foolish purchases very easy. It does also make very wise purchases easy too. We pay out credit card balances off each month. And we have done that for more than two decades. But, many people do not, and the that is a real problem. I do wonder if the whole credit industry will find itself imploding at some point. But for now, many banks seem to love the fact that credit is easy in the US (for many of us) and they seem to count on the fact that most credit card users pay LOTS of interest each month. https://www.newsweek.com/us-credit-card-debt-total-one-trillion-dollars-1757880 Interestingly, Sea World here in San Diego has gone cashless. My daughter, who wanted to use her money to buy food there the other day could not. The times are changing.
Debit + Pin is considerably less secure than Debit transactions ran through VISA or MC. The only actual difference between a Debit Card and a Credit Card is that the Debit Card pays for the items directly out of your bank account rather than it being paid by the Credit Card company and billed to you at a later date that they can eventually charge interest to you. You can run both a credit card and a debit card through VISA and MC's systems. Before going into the following, I am not saying that credit cards are good; they are not. They encourage people to spend more money than they have and incur debts. However, the reason why the FED and banks want people to move from credit cards to debit cards is because overdraft fees. Regularly getting overdraft fees net the banks more money than interest from a credit card, especially when people pay off their cards immediately in full.
If someone uses CC responsibly, they can be a great way to protect the money in your bank account from hackers. If your debit+pin gets stolen, the thieves can drain your bank account. Usually banks will return the money, but that takes time. While you're fighting with the bank to get your money, you can't pay rent and bills, which can cause fees and penalties to pile up. But if your CC info gets stolen, it's just your CC balance that is affected. They money in the bank is safe and you can keep paying your bills while the CC issue is worked out. Using CC responsibly means paying the full balance every month. Paying a CC off every month should be financially equivalent to paying everything with a debit card. Either way, the person should be paying the same $X/month. If someone has trouble doing that, then a debit card may be better in the long run since it won't allow the person to rack up $$$ in CC debt. If someone has the attitude of "If the card works, I can afford it", then a debit card would be better since it would only work as long as there was money in the bank to pay it.
While they can't spend more than they have with a debit card they can still spend everything they have and not have enough for those other items as well. It still boils down to people being responsible with their money no matter if it is a credit card or debit card.
