Originally Posted by
Stephen65
Four of my six Australian credit cards have chip plus mag stripe. The two that don't are Amex cards and they are in the progress of migrating to chip plus mag stripe.
The cards may have the chips, but the mag stripes are still the main method of payment, or at least they were when I was there a couple of years ago. I used my US credit card extensively, and no one batted an eye. In fact, I got the feeling that these chips that the banks were putting in the cards were going unused. Maybe they were put into the cards in anticipation?
How has the situation changed in the last two years? Do stores use the chips to read credit cards more often?
Originally Posted by
Stephen65
As a sidenote the use of cheques to pay for smaller day to day transactions like groceries has always been unusual in Australia even back in the day before credit cards. Before credit cards people used (and many still use) cash. I have stood in thousands of supermarket lines from the early 80s onwards and I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I have seen a cheque used.
Interesting... sounds a lot like many Asian countries, even today.
Out of curiosity, how did people do things like pay rent before internet banking came aabout?