Originally Posted by Mike Jacoubowsky

Chase does have current offerings with "chips" in them. I own one. I got all excited when I read about them, thinking great, at last, a card I can use at train stations and gas stations in France!

Uh-uh. Yes, it has a chip. All cards that you can wave over the reader have a chip, not just a magnetic strip. But it's not the sort of chip that works in Europe. Those cards are defined by a visible interface on the outside of the card that looks just like what you'd see on a phone's simcard. It literally plugs into a machine, which reads the info from that interface. Not from a mag stripe, and not from an embedded chip that's read similarly to an RFID thingee.

So what will the Chase Hyatt cards actually have? If it doesn't have the external visible interface, it's not something that can be used as people here are hoping.

By the way, those restaraunts that won't take an MC or Visa because it isn't Euro-style? They have all, every single one of them, signed a merchant agreement stating that they will take such cards. You can verify this with MC & Visa. Their readers all have slots on the side to read magnetic stripes. But good luck trying to get them to take them. The cynical side of me says there are a lot of cash transactions going unreported.