Originally Posted by
jmr50
I traveled in November with a US-based Chip and Sign card. Someone else in my group had a Canadian Chip and Pin card. We both ran into problems using our cards in the UK and France. His card was rejected at every train station we tried it at, and some (but not all) of the gas station unattended terminals. There was at least one place mine worked but his didn't (UK unattended parking lot), and two places his worked but mine didn't (both Agip gas stations in France).
All I can say is, it's nice to have the EMV chip, but I'm not sure that either PIN or signature represents an end to issues.
Yes, it's nice to have this chip card, but as a person from Denmark, we face the exact same problems as Americans or Canadians with chip/signature cards. The problem is that this chip/pin is not standardized very well, so many things can go wrong between countries.
In the EMV environment, there are two forms of PIN verification: Offline and online verification. In the offline mode, the PIN is checked by the chip, and there is no communication between terminal and central server. In the online environment, the PIN entered is checked against a PIN on a central server. POS devices - attended or unattended can be either online or offline (ATM's are always online). In some countries (e.g. France), all POS Devices are offline, in other countries (e.g. Denmark) all POS devices are online, and some countries have both online and offline POS terminals (e.g. Germany). Now, the problem is that not all cards support offline PIN verification, since the issuer may have chosen not to have the PIN stored on the chip due to the nature of the domestic infrastructure. This is the case in e.g. Denmark and Switzerland, where all transactions are online by rule. When an online only chip card (e.g. a Danish card) is presented in an offline POS (e.g. in France), it obviously cannot get PIN verification. If the POS device is attended, it reverts to the next level of CVM (Cardholder Verification Method) which is signature. But if it is an unattended kiosk, the transaction is declined, since the kiosk does obviously does not support signature as CVM. Since Denmark is an online only country, Danish issued cards do not support offline PIN verification, and therefore they only work as chip/signature cards in offline terminals, and they do not work at all in offline unattended POS devices. Therefore Danish cards cannot be used in SNCF and RER tickets kiosks or in uattended gas stations in France. However, they work in toll boths in France, since these do not require PIN verification. The card issuers know about this, but do not advertise it publicly (actually they hide it very well).
Another problem is that in certain other countries (e.g. Spain) all foreign cards seem to be blocked in kiosks. e.g. in McDonald's self-service kiosks and TMB kiosks in Barcelona, foreign cards (or atleast non-Euro cards) do not work. I do not know why, but this is not because of the offline problem, I tried with an offline capable card too.
BTW all Danish cards issued from August 2011 are now offline capable too and all cards will be exchanged during 2012.