when were debit cards introduced in the uk
In the United Kingdom, banks started to issue debit cards in the mid-1980s in a bid to reduce the number of cheques being used at the point of sale, which are costly for the banks to process; the first bank to do so was Barclays with the Barclays Connect card. As in most countries, fees paid by merchants in the United Kingdom to accept credit cards are a percentage of the transaction amount, which funds card holders' interest-free credit periods as well as incentive schemes such as points or cashback. For consumer credit cards issued within the EEA, the interchange fee is capped at 0.3%, with a cap of 0.2% for debit cards, although the merchant acquirers may charge the merchant a higher fee. Although merchants won the right through The Credit Cards (Price Discrimination) Order 1990 to charge customers different prices according to the payment method, few merchants in the UK charge less for payment by debit card than by credit card, the most notable exceptions being budget airlines and travel agents. Most debit cards in the UK lack the advantages offered to holders of UK-issued credit cards, such as free incentives (points, cashback etc. (the Tesco Bank debit card being one exception)), interest-free credit and protection against defaulting merchants under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974. Almost all establishments in the United Kingdom that accept credit cards also accept debit cards, but a minority of merchants, for cost reasons, accept debit cards and not credit cards.