Judging from the bank cards issued by major banks at present, there is no difference between savings cards and debit cards. A savings card is a debit card. But historically, savings cards and debit cards have similarities, but there are also some differences.
To understand the similarities and differences between them, let's first understand their functions.
Debit cards are more powerful. It can be used for cash deposit and withdrawal, transfer consumption, water and electricity payment, online shopping, and also for purchasing financial services such as wealth management products, stocks, futures and funds. To put it bluntly, debit cards can be almost realized except for the overdraft function of credit cards.
Relatively speaking, the function of the savings card is relatively limited. The savings card is limited to the functions of depositing and withdrawing money, transferring money, remitting money and paying living expenses. You can't buy other financial products such as stock funds.
From the functions of debit card and savings card, we can see that the functions of debit card include all the functions of savings card, while the functions of savings card are only a part of debit card.
From their functions, savings cards are debit cards, but debit cards are not necessarily savings cards, because savings cards are only one kind of debit cards, and debit cards also have the functions of other types of bank cards, and their relationship is mother-child relationship.
Speaking of this, many friends may have questions. Since the debit card already contains all the functions of the savings card, why should the bank open another savings card? In fact, this is a historical issue. A long time ago, banking business was not so complicated, so there were many kinds of bank cards, which could be divided into transfer cards, special cards and stored value cards (savings cards), all of which were called debit cards.
Transfer card is a bank card with the functions of transfer, cash deposit and withdrawal, consumption and so on.
The special card is a special bank card for a specific area, and also has the functions of cash transfer and cash transfer.
A savings card is a prepaid wallet-type debit card in which the bank transfers funds to the card for storage according to the cardholder's requirements, and directly deducts money from the card during the transaction. It has the functions of deposit and withdrawal, transfer and post-consumption payment.
However, with the continuous development of banking business, the scope of banking business is growing, and customers have to issue different cards for different businesses, which is troublesome, inconvenient to manage and inefficient. So later, the bank unified these three types of cards into a debit card, and a debit card has all the functions of special card, savings card and transfer card.
Therefore, most banks now issue debit cards and rarely issue savings cards, so most of the bank cards held by everyone are debit cards. It's just that debit cards have all the functions of savings cards. Many people are still used to calling this debit card a savings card, or some banks directly print the words savings card on the card surface, but it is a standard debit card.
So as far as the current bank card is concerned, in fact, a savings card is a debit card, and a debit card is a savings card. There is no difference between the two, but the names are different.
In fact, debit cards are relative to credit cards.
Strictly speaking, there are only two kinds of bank cards at present, one is debit card (savings card) and the other is credit card (credit card).
Simply put, debit cards can only be used if the user recharges the money into the bank card. The consumption amount cannot exceed the balance on the bank card, and the balance on the debit card bears interest, because the money on the card belongs to the user.