International comparison of bank fraud reimbursement: customer perceptions and contractual terms

We set out to investigate how customers comprehend bank terms and conditions (TC in some cases they differ by product type, and advice can even be contradictory. While many banks allow customers to write PINs down as long as they are disguised and not kept with the card, 20% of banks do not allow PINs to be written down at all, and a handful do not allow PINs to be shared between accounts. We test our findings on 151 participants in Germany, the US and UK. They mostly agree: only 35% fully understand the T&Cs, and 28% find that sections are unclear. There are strong regional variations: Germans find their T&Cs particularly hard to understand, but Americans assume harsher T&Cs than they actually are, and tend to be reassured when they actually read them.

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