&gt;As someone who has cards that settle after ~48 hours and cards that reflect the state of transactions immediately I can clearly state that I heavily prefer the former. The reason for this is that many transactions are not that simple and you end up with a ton of spam on your statements.<p>I will forever be against long settlement times for debit accounts. It reminds me of when I was in college and living paycheck to paycheck. Here in the US many banks have a scheme where they will purposely order your settled transactions from highest to lowest amount in order to charge you more fees should you run out of cash in the account.<p>Say you have $100 available and make 3 purchases in this order: $10, $10, $105. The bank authorizes all three transactions but orders them in decreasing value instead when the account settles. The first $105 charge hits your account causing you to be overdrawn and adding a $35 overdraft fee, then the two additional charges add an additional $35 fee each. So instead of settling the charges in order and being charged one $35 fee, they charge three $35 fees. And if you can&#x27;t bring your account positive in time? Another fee, naturally.<p>It&#x27;s been a while since I experienced this, but I feel for people who are less financially well off like I once was who still have to deal with this. I think banks now make it an option to disallow overdrafts, but by default they&#x27;re allowed to &quot;avoid embarrassment&quot; when shopping.