I can tell you from personal experiences, that toll booths on French highways when unmanned, ONLY TAKE CHIPPED Cards. All the unmanned gas stations we encountered around Geneva and accross border in France, ONLY take chipped card.

The only solution I can see is for the travellers to take precaution - i.e. make sure your car is filled before a long weekend or a national holiday when you travel in Europe, have some CASH, preferrable in changes, so you can pay tolls this way, etc etc

Again, we are talking about situations where only unmanned machines are available, or it is out of normal business hours.

All the talk about contractual agreements between merchants and Visa / Mastercard Networks, and how the cardholders should report the merchants who dont take their mag cards (or in US, to impose a minimum amount for using cards) are USELESS - Does the enforcement exist? or it is a toothless "warning" being issued? Then it does not help the cardholder on the spot when his card is not usable, or accepted.