Originally Posted by
garyschmitt
Did you try a non-Italian chip-pin card issued in the EU? Those might fail as well.
That's actually a very sensible statement, because some merchants will refuse all foreign cards regardless of whether the technology is compatible. Chase cannot guarantee what criteria merchants will use. If Chase were to guarantee foreign acceptance, they would have to issue you a card that internally stores a different card number for every country, and it would have to select and use a domestic number when it's read, as well as supply a billing address in that country. I'm not sure if that's even feasible.
Or we can have a system like Bank of China where you can apply for full credit cards issued by its Hong Kong division from head office. BoC China's risk department approves you, then BoC Hong Kong issues the card and services it with the option to pay your bill while... Not in Hong Kong. So, for an equivalent hypothetical example, Chase USA could look you over, tell Chase Canada "this person's OK, issue him/her a card", and you get a Canadian Chip+PIN card to properly cover that particular base with the ability to pay it off at Chase USA.