I used to have a TYME (Take Your Money Everywhere) card, but it was only for getting cash out of a machine. It was not a Visa-branded debit card that you could use to make purchases, like the one I have now.
But I still drink out of bubblers and say things like “Come here once.” 
In the States, its very regional.
When I was a kid in Dayton, the card was the Green Card, since the ATMs at a large local bank were called Green Machines. Made for a heck of a translation issue when I moved to Illinois and would tell people that I forgot my Green Card.
At least in PA, a lot of folks call it the MAC (Money Access Center, I think) Card. I find myself calling it MAC these days.
Of course, on a visit to Atlanta, no one knew where the hell I could find a MAC machine, but could point me to the ATM.
In some parts of Canada (well, at least, within my family, currently mostly residing in Québec) you might occasionally hear Interac card, as well as debit/bank/ATM card used interchangeably. Also in my family, we might say “guichet” (French for ATM) or, in bad English “Giutchet” just because we think it is funny.
Interac is the national system of electronic banking that Sunspace alluded to above. It is the network that links banks to ATMs to point-of-purchase terminals, and allows users to use only one card for each of these things. That card is issued at your bank, and gives you direct debit (and deposit!) access to your bank accounts (all of them… savings, chequing, whatever). In all cases you need to use your PIN to use the card, just like a regular ATM card. Credit cards issued in Canada are also linked to Interac, so someone could use their credit card in an ATM in Canada and get cash off of their credit (with interest, of course!).
I love Interac. I rarely actually carry cash, since that one little bank card can do it all.
Slight hijack… does anyone in Canada actually say ABM?
Ah, memories. As a kid, when I heard that the local bank branch had installed one of these, I asked my folks to take me to see it (I expected a Hollywood prop, like when the Batmobile shows up at the mall). Once you move across the country, though, people edge away from you if you ask where the nearest Tyme machine is…
In the UK you can use both debit and credit cards in an ATM. So I don’t think there is a special name for them. Just debit or credit card, simple as that.
With the debit card the money is taken from your account straight away. With a credit card you settle the balance when your next card statement arrives.
“Hole-in-the-wall card”.
But that may be a family name. And my parents have never quite caught on to the idea of plastic…
I’m old enough to remember the early 70’s when I was issued with a number of one shot cards from the Royal Bank of Scotland, like a plastic punch card – that the machine took and gave you back a fixed amount – 10GBP as I remember
After that we had separate cards to guarantee cheques and to get cash from a “cashpoint” or “hole-in-the-wall” outside the bank (I’ve never heard a member of the public refer to it as an ATM in the UK). Like jjimm I would have called this a “cashpoint card” or maybe just a “cash card”. I think it was in the late 80’s the UK banks brought in multi-function cards to act as cheques guarantee, cashpoint, and debit cards for purchases – from then on it’s just been a “debit card” to me.
Bank card.
Or “guichet” card, if my Frenglish is on full-tilt that day.
A debit card can be used to debit money from your account through an ATM, a shop, online etc its different from a simple cash card, that only takes money from an ATM for you. I have a simple cash card that doesn’t guarantee cheques or act as a debit card, no chip and pin you see, it simply lets me take money out of the ATM. Although I too have never really heard that term used here in Belfast, hole in the wall or cash machine being more common.
In the beginning, there was the credit card. The credit card is a piece of plastic used to identify credit account holders. Initially, the card was (usually) properly a “charge card”, that is, a card that represented an account of limited term (usually until payment due date the next month) credit. From what I’ve read, Western Union actually was the first to offer consumers a charge card; most of us older types will remember each and every department store having their own version. In 1950, the Diners Club charge card was invented; the novelty was that the card could be used at multiple retailers. American Express soon followed.
The true “credit” card, which involves a revolving credit account that does not need to be paid off at the end of each period, started showing up in the 1920’s. They were, I believe, issued by gasoline companies, to allow purchase of fuel for the growing fad of automobiles. It wasn’t until 1958 that the BankAmericard was introduced, the first attempt at a widespread, general use credit card (that’s what is now called VISA, btw). MasterCharge and its card, the MasterCard, didn’t issue until 1966. The same year, BarclayCard also arrived, the first non-American card, so far as I can tell.
In the seventies, a new type of card started showing up. These were Check Cards, or Checking Guarantee Cards. Initially, they started as an ID issued by a merchant with multiple locations which authorized that merchant’s cashiers to accept a check from the customer with the ID card without the normal screening process to ensure the validity of the check. At the time, acceptance of checks by merchants was beginning to run into trouble; people tended to write checks drawn on insufficient funds, and the merchant was unable to recover the money without an expensive, time-consuming process. The merchant would issue the check card to customers who applied for it, and who passed a check into their financial situation, including information about their current account, past history, credit worthiness, etc. Grocery stores were big on this; I had two or three at the time.
Banks began to capitalize upon this trend by issuing true “check guarantee cards” (sometimes called check acceptance cards, etc.). The bank would advertise that it would honor a check written by any customer with such a card, regardless of whether the customer actually had sufficient funds in the account upon which the check was drawn. The bank would offer these to its preferred customers; usually you had to agree to some sort of account arrangement that allowed the bank to get its hands on your money easily, such as a tied-in savings account. I found an interesting FDIC legal opinion about check guarantee cards which explains their workings.
Not much after that, the first “cash cards” showed up. These were cards which you could use to withdraw funds from an Automated Teller Machine. Although invented in the UK fairly long ago, they did not come into widespread use until the late 70’s. The cash card had a magnetic stripe on the back which encoded your account number and a Personal Identification Number (PIN; I HATE it when people say PIN number!!! :smack: ). My first one came in 1979, issued by Marine Midlands Bank, and was a godsend for a college student who hated to stand in line in the bank to cash a check solely to have money for pizza. It was right next to a 24-hour diner that saw WAY too much of my appetite at 2:30 am… but that’s another story. The terms for such cards were proprietary, but usually people just called them a cash card, until the term ATM actually started being quite popular, which didn’t happen until…
The invention of the “debit card.” A debit card is a card that debits your (usually checking) account automatically when you use it. A cash card did the same thing, but worked only at the specific bank’s ATMs. A debit card could be used anywhere there were terminals linked to a central network into which your particular bank was tied. As an example, there was the STAR network, into which both Bank of America and Wells Fargo Bank were tied in the 80’s, which allowed me to purchase gas from ARCO stations and food from Carl’s Jr. restaurants, and groceries from (IIRC) Safeway stores. The trouble was that there were competing networks, and a given retailer might not be part of the network your small bank chose to participate in, so the functionality was not great, but they were a godsend for people who didn’t qualify for credit cards and didn’t want to carry large sums of cash (my dad always had $200+ in his wallet; I never knew why until I became an adult…). These networks allowed ATMs to become a widespread feature of gasoline stations and other remote places.
The final evolution was the decision of MasterCard and VISA to issue debit cards which clear the funds through the existing MasterCard and VISA credit networks. It was a classic case of “if you can’t beat them, join them.” As a result, almost all ATM debit cards are now merged with the ability to use them at all locations which accept credit cards. The original terms for such cards differed from bank to bank; now in the US, most people just think of them as a debit card, as an ATM card, as a check card, as a cash card, or as their credit card (even if it isn’t truly a credit account card). We’ve had so many terms that we just use whatever is handy and feels right, regardless of the technical usage. 
They are on the way out, by the way. I think it won’t be long before everyone uses some form of RFID or similar technology; the Mobil/Exxon Speedpass is an example. Much MUCH easier to use.
I kept wondering whether I should post this too – was afraid it was too much minutia.
And the bank was … Gem City Savings – I miss the light blue logo.
You have listed only two of the four common functions, in particular, leaving out the situation asked about in the OP – getting a cash withdrawal from an ATM machine. A “debit card” is used to complete a transaction with a merchant – you’re not getting cash in your hand. The ATM withdrawal is not a “debit card” transaction, but a regular withdrawal from your account, as if you had walked up to a bank teller window and shown your passbook.
It is most certainly called a “debit card” in Australia. The fact that Visa have developed a type of account that lets you use your own money for Visa purchases is a different issue. I’ve always heard them generically referred to as debit cards, whether they have a Visa type of added function or not.
“Keycard” is a trademark of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. I think Westpac has “Handycard” or something like that, and there are others. But that is like saying the word for “car” is actually “Ford” or “Toyota”.
They’re well-known in this country as debit cards.
I have two from my Korean bank. One is an IC Card, which I can only use at ATMs. The other is a BC Check Card, which is just like a Visa Check Card but for BC (a South Korean credit card company) instead of Visa.
My card for my American bank is also a Check Card.
Oh, I forgot to mention one thing about the IC Card. AFAIK, IC stands for Intelligent Chip. (That’s why I asked for it, of course.) In addition to the standard magnetic strip on the back, the card also has a computer chip in it.
And in Canada as well, as I explained upthread. Debit card = bank card = “client card” = money-machine card = Interac card (Interac is the name of the debit-card network).
In Canada, as far as I know, we do not even have debit cards that use the Mastercard or Visa infrastructure. (We may have combined credit cards and Interac cards, but the debit function will always go via the interac network, and the credit function via the Mastercard or Visa networks.)
Credit and debit cards have those now to facilitate chip and pin payments in shops, so I just keep calling them credit or debit cards.
To be precise, “guichet” is French for wicket, and I believe it originally referred to bank teller windows. When ATMs were introduced, they were called “guichets automatiques” in French, but given that they’re now the most common method used for deposits and withdrawals, often people only say “guichet”. How would I call my bank card? In English, I would probably call it a “debit card” or “Interac card”, or in French, “carte de débit” or “carte Interac”, maybe even “carte de guichet”.
Actually, now that I think about it, “bank card” is in my case a misnomer, since it was issued by Desjardins.
What I should have said is that people who work in banks when talking to customers would not call an ATM card a debit card.
Yes many of the general public do call an ATM card a debit card.Not that many actually. Many people say ‘Keycard’ even though they have never banked with Commonweath.
I’ve got an account like that. It’s a savings account that’s also a Visa account. The Visa component is essentially an overdraft. If I make a purchase and my balance is less than zero, it’s a credit card purchase, more than zero and it’s a debit card purchase, regardless of which physical card I actually hand the assistant. The Visa card itself is basically redundant unless I’m overseas.