When Farah Patel needs to make a purchase, she often pulls out her MasterCard debit card, which deducts her purchases automatically from her bank account. The 30-year-old Greenwich, Conn. woman said she prefers it to her credit card.
“I don’t want to pay for my gas with a credit card and know I’m going to be paying interest on gas,” she said.
Patel is one of many debit card users who have helped MasterCard reach a new milestone. For the first time ever, the company said, U.S. debit card customers spent as much with their MasterCard debit cards — $118 billion — in the last fiscal quarter as they did with their credit cards.
Alice Gomstyn 