"Well I don't like that. I don't like that at all."

Tangentially, I really hate the common conflation of terms many people have.

From context we pick up that the post is talking about signature authentication vs chip & PIN authentication. Neither of that actually has anything to do with credit or debit, it's basically a misnomer on the EFT terminals that those authentication methods are selected via buttons/options labeled as such. Outside of the US, where signature authentication has long been phased out in most place due to its lack of security, it's less likely to run into this confusion. Both debit cards and credit cards use chip & PIN.

Aside from the totally erroneous labeling of authentication methods, there's still the issue where credit transactions and debit transactions are distinctly different (one is a line of credit, the other from existing funds in an account) but there's also both credit and debit networks. So for example VISA runs a credit network, but it's actually possible to run debit transactions over their credit network.

So when someone wants to run as credit, it's like... do they want a credit transaction? Or a debit transaction over a credit network? Or are they just talking about bypassing Chip & PIN in favor of a signature? ¯\(ツ)

/r/TalesFromRetail Thread