What is the difference between credit and debit?

This is my first time using my card to pay for stuffs. The cashier always asks me credit or debit. What is the difference between these two?|||About the only difference I've seen as that if you specify credit, you don't have to enter your pin number but have to sign your name on the receipt, and with debit, you enter your pin number, and it is deducted from your account generally that same day.|||Basically, one is PIN based (debit) and the other is signature based (credit).


The end result is that the money comes out of your accounts, just the processing is different by the merchant.|||credit is in your favour,debit is when you pay out|||Simple answer: For debit you need a PIN and for credit you need to sign.





More involved answer:


Debit requires a PIN number and the funds will be automatically deducted from your checking account. Credit requires a signature, and while the funds will automatically be reserved for the payment (they will be "pending"), the money does not actually leave the account for 2-5 days, depending on the vendor and the bank. Also, credit can only be done on debit cards with the Visa or MasterCard logo.








Banks charge stores extra for the ability to process debit cards as credit, so some stores will charge you a fee if you decide to do credit. This is pretty rare, however, and the ones that do will have this clearly posted everywhere, and the cashier is generally required to tell you about the fee and allow you to decline.





Additionally, because of this, some banks will offer rewards for money spent w/ debit card, but only when the card is processed as credit. This, for example, is true for the Wells Fargo Gold checking account and debit card. For debit transactions, you earn nothing towards rewards, but for credit transactions, you earn 1 point for every $3 spent.





Hope this makes sense.|||Debit is what you already have on a card, that you spend with like you would with a checking account





Credit is money you are spending that isn't yours but you are to pay back|||Credit is not immediate, debit is. They charge us outrageous amounts when you use your card as credit, but I believe there is a maximum of 75 cents they can charge us when you use it as debit. Credit equals bad for store good for bank, and debit equals good for store bad for bank. It doesnt really affect the consumer at all, but not many people don't know the things behind the scenes.