Why do some online stores not ask for the 3-digit code on the back of my credit card?
As a general premise: In most of the online transactions in case of dispute the benefit of doubt is given to the customer. IE if the customer refuses to pay and claims that its not his transaction, the card company reverses the charges and does not pay the merchant (or recovers if its already paid).   There are many types of online vendors who use a variety of methods to ensure that they are not at loss. Some of these are: Given that the laws on consumer liability for unauthorized transactions mean no cost in most cases, the CVV is there to protect the merchant.  Typically a merchant will receive a lower cost from their bank to process the transaction with the CVV code versus without. As far as the Netflix case goes, (or any other recurring billing for that matter) they wouldn't care as much about it because Visa/MC/Amex regulations prohibit storage of the CVV.  So if they collect it then it's only used for the first transaction and renewals just use the rest of the card info (name, expiration date, address). Does the presence of CVV indicate the merchant has better security?  Maybe, maybe not.  It probably means they care about their costs and want to pay the bank as little as possible to process the transaction. There are different ways of credit card purchase authorizations. if some choose less secure method it's their problem. Merchants are charged back if a stolen card is used. Some businesses verify the shipping address with the credit card company, and refuse to ship to an alternate address without additional, offline verification.  Of course, this is only useful for physical goods. @Jeremy Using CVV doesn't decrease the transaction cost. I know this because I have quotes for CC transactions and the cost/transaction doesn't depend on using CVV. That said we don't plan to use CVV because we sell insurance and the likelihood that someone who steals CC will buy insurance is very low. The truth is that Visa does not require a merchant to enter the cvv number before authorizing a transaction.  The only information that is really needed is the credit card number and expiration date.
"This might not be the answer you are looking for, but the alternative to ""don't patronize these merchants"" is this: DO patronize these merchants, and pay cash.   Credit cards are convenient.  (I use a credit card often.)  However, there is no denying that they cost the merchants an incredible amount in fees, and that our entire economy is paying for these fees.  The price of everything is more than it needs to be because of these fees.  Yes, you get some money back with your rewards card, but the money you get back comes directly from the store you made the purchase with, and the reward is paid for by increasing the price of everything you buy.  In addition, those among us that do not have the credit score necessary to obtain a rewards card are paying the same higher price for goods as the rest of us, but don't get the cash back reward. Honestly, it seems quite fair to me that only the people charging purchases to a credit card should have to pay the extra fee that goes along with that payment processing.  If a store chooses to do that, I pay cash instead, and I am grateful for the discount." The SCHUFA in Germany works a bit different from the FICO score in the US. My background: I am a German currently living in the US. The information others want to see from the SCHUFA are a bit different. If you want to example rent a house or an apartment, the landlord often wants to see a SCHUFA statement which only shows that there are no negative entries. This statement you can get easily from online and they don't mention your credit score there. If you apply for a real credit or want to lease a car, they want to look deeper in your SCHUFA profile. However, very important is: They need signed permission to do this. Every participating company can submit entries to your profile where the score is calculated from. For example mobile phone plans, leasing a car, applying for a loan. Some lenders decide on the score itself, some on the overall profile and some also take your income into account. Since there is no hire & fire in Germany you are often asked to show your last 3 paychecks. This, in combination with your SCHUFA score is used for determination if you are eligible for a loan or not. However, they check through every entry which is made there and as long as it is reasonable and fits to your income (car for 800 EUR/month with a 1000 EUR salary does not!) you should not have a problem establishing a good score. The, in my eyes, unfair part about Schufa is that they take your zip code and your neighborhood into account when calculating their score. Also moving often affects the score negatively. To finally answer your question: Credit history is also built by mobile phone plans etc. in Germany. As long as you pay everything on time you should be fine. A bad score can definitely hurt you, but it is not as important to have a score as it is in the US because the banks also determine your creditworthiness based on your monthly income and your spending behavior. First, if you live in/around a reasonably populated urban area, and you're in the United States, I can't see why you would choose to bank with Chase, B of A, or another large commercial bank. I think you would be much better served by banking at a reasonably large credit union. There are many differences between banks and credit unions, but in a nutshell, credit unions are owned by the members, and operate primarily to provide benefits to their members, whereas a bank is owned by the shareholders, and operates primarily to make profits for the shareholders (not to benefit the customers). The banking industry absolutely hates the credit unions, so if you've ever been nickeled-and-dimed with this fee and that charge by your bank, I have to ask why you're still banking with a company that irritates you and/or actively tries to screw you out of your money? I live in California, and I've banked at credit unions almost exclusively since I started working nearly 30 years ago. Every time I've strayed and started banking at a for-profit bank, I've regretted it. For example, a few years ago I opened a checking account at a now-defunct bank (WaMu) just for online use: eBay and so forth. It was a free checking account. When Chase bought WaMu, the account became a Chase account, and it seemed that every other statement brought new fees, new restrictions, and so forth. I finally closed it when they imposed some stupid fee for not carrying enough of a balance. I found out by logging in to their Web site and seeing a balance of zero dollars; they had imposed the fee a few statements back, and I had missed it, so they kept debiting my account until it was empty. At this point, I do about 90% of my banking at a fairly large credit union. I have a mortgage with a big bank, but that was out of my hands, as the lender/originator sold the mortgage and I had no say in the matter. My credit union has a highly functional Web site, permits me to download my account activity to Quicken, and even has mobile apps which allow me to deposit a check by taking a picture of it, or check my account activity, etc. They (my credit union) are part of a network of other credit unions, so as long as I am using a network ATM, I never pay a fee. In sum, I can't see any reason to go with a bank. Regarding checks, I write a small number of checks per year, but I recently needed to reorder them. My credit union refers members directly to Harland-Clarke, a major-league player in the check printing business. Four boxes of security checks was around $130 plus shipping, which is not small money. However, I was able to order the very same checks via Costco for less than half that amount. Costco refers members to a check printing service, which is a front/subsidiary of Harland-Clarke, and using a promo code, plus the discount given for my Costco membership, I got four boxes of security checks shipped to me for less than $54. My advice would be to look around. If you're a Costco member, use their check printing service. Wal*mart offers a similar service to anyone, as does Sam's Club, and you can search around to find other similar services. Bottom line, if you order your checks via your bank or credit union, chances are you will pay full retail. Shop around, and save a bit. I've not opened a new account at a credit union in some time, but I would not be surprised if a credit union offered a free box of checks when you open a new account with them. In my experience dealing with credit cards and store cards, you may find that the store card is much more flexible than the credit card in terms of the enforcement of the card agreement.  For instance, I've missed payments on credit cards and only been 1 day late and saw a rate increase, but on a store card when the same thing happened, it was like they didn't even notice.  Granted, this was a 100% store card with no VISA/MC logo on it, and it was through their bank. This may not be true of all store cards and your experience may differ, but I felt like the store card was more of a tool for acquiring the merchandise and helping the store make a sale than it was for some big bank to make money off of my interest. With credit cards, you are the product, and the bank makes money purely from interest. The store, on the other hand, makes money from selling the product, and credit helps increase sales. My suggestion is to avoid credit altogether as all debt is risk, but if you must use credit, you may have a better experience with the store card. Of course, don't forget to consider the interest rates, payment plan, and other fees that may apply as they may affect your decision in terms of which to go with. EMV cards use an offline transaction counter to increase security. This counter is maintained inside the card and incremented every time a transaction is confirmed by the card. For (online) contact transactions, the card will usually receive feedback from its issuer, which (among other actions) will reset that counter to zero. For offline transactions, the card will increment the counter by one each time it is used. For contactless transactions, things are a bit different: Since contactless transactions usually do not maintain a connection between the card and the terminal long enough to transmit issuer feedback to the card, the counter cannot be reset that way. The counter will therefore even be incremented for online transactions. The implications of this are dependent on what your issuer is actually doing with the contents of the offline counter: Some issuers use this as a safety measure for contactless cards and allow only a limited number of contactless transactions, since those usually do not require any cardholder verification method below a certain threshold (e.g. 25€ in many European countries), and the total risk in case of physical card theft can therefore be limited to <number of offline transactions>*<maximum contactless transaction amount>. Usually, you would have to use your card in a contact-based transaction to reset the counter, and the terminal would display an according notice. It is indeed strange that the terminal instead requested your PIN. If this happens again, you could try to use your card once via the contact interface and see if this resets your offline counters and allows you to pay without PIN entry for the next few transactions. If the billing cycle is 2 to 3 months, it would mean Banks have to give credit for a longer period and it makes the entire business less profitable as well as more risky compared to the Monthly billing cycle. For example the current monthly billing cycle with a date say of 14th, means if you swipe your card on 1st day, one would effectively get a credit for 30+14, around 44 days. If you swipe on last day, one would get a credit for 14 days. On an average 22 days of credit. If we make this 3 months, the credit period would increase on an average (90+14)/2, 52 days. From a risk point of view, on monthly cycle if there is non-payment its flagged much earlier compared to a 3 months cycle. On offering different dates, shop around. In the older times the cycles were different, however with individuals having several cards, and trying to optimize every purchase to maximize credit period. Quite a few banks have streamlined it to monthly cycle. Shop around and some banks should be able to offer you different dates. In many cases, you can be temporarily out of pocket by significant amounts.  Even if you then get the money back, there may be difficulties or consequential costs that aren't covered. For example your card gets cloned and maxxed out while travelling, leaving you without your most effective means to pay for necessities.  You're left paying over the odds to withdraw cash on your debit card (if you can even get enough out at a time e.g. India at the moment) or you have to get money wired to you. At the same time you can't really protect your card number.  You can't even keep your card in sight in some places, never mind protect against the card number being displayed/recorded locally by the card machine. Mastercard rules also prohibit asking for ID along with the card. Yet, when I was at Disneyland, years ago (so I don't know if this is still a practice) they asked for my driver's license with every purchase. I can charge up to $200 at Costco with a swipe, not even a signature, but a $5 bottle of water (maybe it was $6) required me to produce my license.  The answer is Pete's comment, don't patronize these merchants. By the way, it's legal now. From Visa web site -  Note - 9* states still prohibit surcharges, so they tend to offer cash discounts. The question you linked is from 2010, things change.