Debit Card: Shell Vs Petronas - Different First Charge Rate and Refund Period (Malaysia)

I am used to using my debit card for buying petrol or gas to avoid running out of cash and to earn some bonus points. It was quite normal for me when the Shell charged RM200.00 initially when I used my debit card to purchase petrol. Then, the money (RM200.00) will be returned to my account and the price of the petrol will be paid from my account within three working days. In other words, we need to put RM200.00 "deposit" when buying petrol from Shell via debit card. I was thinking that every petrol station will do the something as what Shell do until I used my debit card in Petronas recently.

Surprisingly, the deposit for Petronas is only RM150.00 and the deposit will be returned only within one working day. A summary of these two companies is shown below:

Company	Initial Deposit	Deposit Return Period
Shell	RM 200	3 working days
Petronas	RM 150	1 working day

Sometimes, I was just wondering why the Shell need to have such high deposit and such long period for transaction. However, it should not be a problem as long as the bank account of the debit card is enough to pay this deposit. Otherwise, one might required to pay interest due to overdue or borrowing money from the bank to pay this kind of deposit. It is not very wisely since the interest rate is very high.

To sum up, debit card is a very useful tool just like what credit card do. But, we need to very careful and alert the amount in the account to avoid paying unnecessary interest due to overdue or borrowing money from the bank. That's all for today. Feel free to give me a comment about this topic or any suggestion about Xaivier Blog. It will be a great support to Xaivier Blog.

Written by: Xaivier Chia

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