What is a Visa Debit Card?

It’s a great way to enjoy everyday retail and internet, mail order and over the phone shopping, without the fear of that credit card bill looming at the end of the month.

 

The infatuation with “have it now and pay through the nose later” seems to have worn off for most people and a little bit of self control and patience really pays for itself when there is no interest charged on top of the original purchase price.

Many banks and financial institutions are now offering a visa debit card on every day accounts as a replacement for the old EFTPOS and ATM card, because it offers all of these services with the added benefits of Visa access. It also helps to reduce the number of accounts and cards you hold in your name and have to carry in your wallet.

 

All you have to do at the point of sale is click CREDIT instead of SAVINGS and sign your name. It pays to aware of a couple of things first though, for instance some retailers may charge a surcharge of up to 2% for using a Visa Debit Card so you need to know if this is being charged and if it is less than the transaction fees that your bank would charge you if you clicked on SAVINGS instead and entered your PIN.

 

By using the Visa Debit feature it can also a few days for the funds to clear from your account and this can lead to a “false” account balance whereby you may over-spend and incur overdrawing approval fees from your bank.

There does seem to be a new trend of personal financial management emerging, getting away from the credit card and hire purchase traps that have spiralled out of control for some people in recent years.

 

With a Visa Debit Card, you need to have the funds available in your account to make a purchase, which forces us back into that good old-fashioned practice of saving up for the things we want to buy. It also gives us back the power of exercising the choice to pay now.

 

Many parents are looking to the new Visa Debit Card as a means of providing their teenagers and children with a secure means of payment that they can carry with them instead of cash. They are not subject to the dilemmas of minors and credit clearance, and the parents can have direct control over the amount of funds they make available to their children at any given time.

 

The concept is beautifully simple and I know of one very independent Octogenarian who is more comfortable signing her name to access her own funds than entering that increasingly hard to remember pin number, by pressing those awkward little buttons on the EFTPOS machine!