What is a debit card?
A debit card is like a pre-paid card that deducts money directly from a consumer’s account when paying for a purchase or service. With debit cards, consumers can pay with their savings, and this way they don't need to use cash or physical checks. In many cases, consumers can have both debit and credit on the same card.
How does a debit card work?
In Brazil, debit cards have always been one of the most popular ways to pay for shopping at brick-and-mortar stores. Now, this behavior is migrating - very massively and quickly - to online shopping, especially due to the security and innovations on this kind of transaction (new 3DS 2.0 protocol and also the dynamic CVV in some cases, with a short lifespan, ensuring more security and less fraudulent chargebacks).
People can use debit cards in some different cases since the card is directly linked to a personal account. It's possible to withdraw money from the account through ATM and then use this money however the consumer wants.
Also, people use their debit cards to pay for their daily expenses, physical purchases, and also for their online purchases. That is very common in Brazil, sometimes consumers don't want to pay for their expenses in the next month, they want to pay in the moment of the purchase with the money they know they have. Therefore, is very important to also have this payment option on your e-commerce.
What is the difference between credit and debit cards?
Physically the two are the same, they have the same number of digits, size, and information. But that is not all, debit card as we said before is linked to the personal account, and to use it you need to have funds on that account. To use credit cards it is not necessary to have funds because it allows consumers to borrow money from the card issuer up to a limit and they pay just in the next month.
