Can a cashier refuse to give back your credit card?

If her terminal really said that, she can. If it didn't, she cant. Theres really not much you can do about it at this point. Its not like that's a fraud she can get away with for very long without getting caught.

If that card left your sight you need to confirm that the clerk didn't steal the info on the strip. This happened to my neighbor at a subway and they cleaned out his bank account. That is why I do not use my debit card. Credit cards offer some fraud protection and if you pay them off every month, they don't cost you anything no matter what the interest rate is.

Sure - if there was a chance that the card was stolen, they could have every right to hold it back. That being said, did you offer to prove your identity? If not, that should have been your first point of action. Another option - get the manager involved. I understand why they did since stolen debit and credit cards are used all of the time at gas stations, so I would be thankful that someone was on top of it. However, there should be a policy in place to prevent them from taking it prematurely like what happened to you. **EDIT** By putting in the wrong PIN you gave them suspicion to hold the card until your identity was established.

A cashier doesn't exactly come out right and say that if it's true...they act like there is a problem with the machine and call either a manager (if one is on duty) or they call the police. But since this one asked for no ID, and outright said that...that is highly suspicious. I would definitely call corporate. She didn't follow proper procedures in order to "keep" your card, something fishy is going on there. Good luck.

The credit card machines actually do tell merchants to keep the cards under certain circumstances, but it does not sound like that was what happened here. Call the credit card company and ask whether the store was told to keep the card. If they say that the store was not told to do that, then call the corporate office. If they say that the store was told to do that, then ask the credit card company why.

I worked in retail, and we would routinely get a message that said "Pick Up Card" when we attempted to process some credit card transactions. At that point, we were required to take the card, cut it in half, and return it to Visa or Mastercard.

I have never had that happen to me.

I've worked in retail for 5 years and I've never heard of that before. I am sure she was up to something. As far as the cops not doing anything about it?.. that's something else.

It's stealing, hence prosecutable by law