In my view, the U.S. is leading the way in this area.
Europe seems to be shifting the burden of fraud prevention onto customers with methods like SMS notifications and pins. In contrast, in the U.S., banks and businesses are primarily responsible for dealing with fraud.
It's not leading the way technically but for the end consumer it might be better. If I get charged unfairly my bank will tell me to go to the police. Americans can easily just refuse it.
Not if you use a credit card; a quick call to Visa/MC/Amex will get your money back instantly in Europe too.
The main difference is that, in Europe, debit cards are often used in the same way as a CC - except they are just a direct pipe to one's bank, and once the money comes down the pipe there is no easy way to push it back up.
I'm sorry but using strong authentication to make my payment is not a burden, it's a bloody feature.
Here's how much of a "burden" that is: you hold your ATM card next to the terminal. Done. Paid. Every once in a while (based on a configurable max per week) it will prompt for a PIN. Which you enter in 5 secs. That would be 1 in 10 payments.
Online payment: scan payment QR with phone, which takes me to my banking app. Authentication is FaceID, TouchID or PIN. Then you click "Yes". Done.
Both methods are highly secure, require no or minimal input and are extremely fast.
On the other hand, the EU caps credit card fees at 0.5% by law while in the US merchants will pay 3 times that at a minimum.
I suspect that in the US CC processors are incentivized to increase their processing fees to cover the cost of fraud instead of building features to prevent it because they can and it's easier than building features. Businesses are incentivized to increase prices to cover the cost of fraud (and CC processing costs) since processors offer such poor tooling to prevent it.
In the US the burden of fraud prevention is squarely on the honest consumer's wallet.
It's curious that the same product isn't cheaper in Europe compared to the U.S., despite Europeans not funding fraud. I can't help but wonder where those extra savings go.
Products are more expensive in Europe because we have (on average) ~20% sales tax. And because the general tax pressure is higher because we have more state services.
In terms of PPP someone should look it up (on mobile)
Oh, please. You're grossly misinformed. If anything, US is lagging lightyears behind Europe in terms of fighting fraud and fighting card schemes, which are stripping everyone equally in US, banks and customers alike.
PSD2 directive intruduced a lot of novelties, which no one at the time had (and very few do, not even US). For instance, specific to this situation - remote payments above 30 eur must be SCA (strong customer authentication, similar to 2FA, but more elaborate) verified (small value exception from PSD2 RTS). Also, banks must have both real time and post-time transaction monitoring in place, i.e. they must have systems to detect and prevent such fraudulent attemtps. There literally tens if not hundreds of fraud fighting measures in PSD2, which all banks (both acquirer and issuer) must come mply with. I could go on and on (not the place and format).
Frankly, it's utterly unbelievable that this kind of thing could happen without anyone (either acquirer or issuer) intervenining. Not what could (should) happen here in Europe.
Europe seems to be shifting the burden of fraud prevention onto customers with methods like SMS notifications and pins. In contrast, in the U.S., banks and businesses are primarily responsible for dealing with fraud.