“Credit or debit?” must be the most annoying question at a retail store. It’s a huge waste of time.
Most people use a given plastic card as either a credit card or a debit card, but not both. They might carry a credit card and a debit card, but they rarely use the same card for both functions.
If you add up all the time that customers and stores collectively spend asking and answering this question, you have a huge productivity killer. Multiple the billions of retail transactions each year times the time spent on the question and you realize that America is wasting truck loads of hours on a stupid question.
The marketplace can’t stop this waste of time because no player or set of players is big enough. If Visa stops it, they give Mastercard an advantage. If Target refuses to except duel purpose cards, then they’ll loose some sales to Wal-mart.
The question started when banks were trying to get debit cards adopted. Some banks made it possible for the same card to have both functions. Dual function cards have no way to tell the gas pump or cashier whether they’re being used as a debit card or a credit card. As a result, people have to manually answer the question.
You might think, “what’s the big deal? It only takes a few seconds.” Since the process is slightly different at every store, the customer has to adjust to each process. It probably takes 20 seconds per customer. If there’s a line, it costs all those customers 20 seconds too. If you multiple all that out, you’re costing the American economy time and money.
Most customers are making the debit / credit card choice when they pull the card out of their wallets. Jane uses the Chase card for debit transactions and the Bank of America card for credit transactions. This makes the time wasting question all the more useless. Customers are merely relaying information about the choice they’ve already made.
The Obama Administration could speed up every checkout transaction in the United States by ensuring that plastic can be either a credit card or a debit card, but not both.
