Originally Posted by
rove312
On another board, there have been some categorical statements that Visa/MC-branded debit cards do not work for purchases outside the country where they were issued. Since there's a section about them on the wiki, can I take it that at least some can be used? The section's small, but that may be because there isn't much incentive to use them other than taking a lower percentage than one's credit card. So do the recent "Confirmed" dates mean that they've actually been used for purchases? Does this include U.S. cards in Italy?
As explained on the wiki, PIN-based point of sale transactions on US-issued debit/ATM cards generally do not work. In my experience, signature-based transactions on US-issued debit cards that have a Visa or MC logo work fine overseas, however. Most of us around here just don't bother with debit cards overseas because we prefer to dispute bad charges on a credit card rather than deal with reversing overdraft fees and whatnot on our bank accounts. Plus the rewards on credit cards are better and we get to keep the cash in our bank accounts (where it earns interest) for another month or so.
On the wiki, "confirmed" dates mean the cards have been actually used somewhere overseas on those dates and resulted in the fees listed on the wiki. For debit and credit cards, it means at point of sale. For ATM cards, it means at the ATM.