Credit Card Compromised

Read the terms closely. Those traditional Amex cards are charge cards, not debit cards. I believe the charges are paid out of your brokerage account only on a monthly basis. What you might be more concerned about (I was) is that these cards were offered as "ATM" cards. But they're not, really. The "withdrawals" are treated as cash advances, and the payment for those charges, rather than monthly, are made nightly. Because of this arcane structure, I believe these cards offer the same protection as any charge or credit card. In contrast, the current batch of Fidelity ATM/debit cards don't provide that protection.

Another difference is that Amex issues different numbers if you ask for two cards. And Amex separates charges by account numbers. So you can see what each person is charging, and also cancel/replace a single card without temporarily shutting down the whole account. When Amex says "don't leave home without it", they mean their cards, not the licensed cards. You won't get the same level of replacement service from FIA as from Amex. On the other hand, you won't be charged 2.8% on foreign transactions. Fidelity's FIA Amex (and Visa) charge 1%.

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Maybe, maybe not. Debit cards often (usually?) have expiration dates on them. We have an account with debit cards that we never use. Because of that, the bank did not issue replacement cards - a fact I found out two days before the expiration date, and two days before leaving on a long vacation where I expected to have use of the cards (for foreign currency). Fortunately, our two cards had different expiration dates, so one was still valid. I'm pretty sure that had we waited long enough, they both would have expired without replacement.

So while debit card services were not cancelled, technically the card itself was cancelled for lack of use.

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