Debit Cards

Swiss Private Banking offers Debit Cards and our affiliated Swiss Private Bank (the most experienced in the world) can help you.

A Debit card is a plastic card which provides an alternative payment method to cash when making purchases. Its functionality is more similar to writing a cheque as the funds are withdrawn directly from either the bank account (often referred to as a cheque card), or from the remaining balance on the card. In some cases, the cards are designed exclusively for use on the Internet, and so there is no physical card. In potential cases, the card may be completely different compared to these two examples.

The use of debit cards has become wide-spread in many countries and has overtaken the check, and in some instances cash transactions by volume. Like credit cards, debit cards are used widely for telephone and Internet purchases. This may cause inconvenient delays at peak shopping times (e.g., the last shopping day before Christmas), caused when the volume of transactions overloads the bank networks.

In some countries the debit card is multipurpose, acting as the ATM card for withdrawing cash and as a check guarantee card. Merchants can also offer "cashback"/"cashout" facilities to customers, where a customer can withdraw cash along with their purchase.