sdsearch

Are you traveling so much on vacations, or on business?

I would think that the experiences you're describing vs the opposite experiences that Happy is describing might be related to where you go once you're in those countries.

My experience if you hang out in areas that tourists are "expected" is that most merchants understand (once you quickly show them the back of the card) how to deal with a swipe card.

On the other hand, if language is an impediment, even a chip & (offline) PIN card does not even necesarily help. I am in Switzerland right now, and after picking up a rental card I wanted to buy some bottled water. I first tried a grocery chain (four-letter name starting with an "L", but I forget the exact name). I see only an insert-card-from-the-front terminal. I don't speak/read German, and the cashier doesn't speak English. I show them the swipe card (that I prefer, because it has 0% forex and extra points on GGD) but she says no. So I try putting in my chip & (offline) PIN MC and get some sort of message (without the word "PIN" in it) from the terminal. It "smells" like an error message, but I can't figure out what the story is. I try the swipe card in the same terminal, a slightly different message I can't understand. I try the chip & PIN card again, still undeciprherable (to me) messages. She asks "credit card", and I guess that maybe they only take debit cards there, who knows? So I give up and leave the bottled water there and walk out of the store.

I drive on down the road and see a gas station with a convenience store. The clerk there (presumably used to swipe cards from gas purchasers?), don't blink when I hand her a swipe card (swipe side showing), and it works perfectly (though a long wait, by some standards, to phone for authorization!).

So with experiences like this, I "modify my behavior" (as "only" a tourist) to try to shop at places where I'll get the least grief from my card. And because of langauge issues on the card terminals, I don't find chip cards to be the panacea that you do. (And, btw, this isn't the first time that a chip card has given me an undecipherable message not mentiong "PIN", just the first on this trip.)

But then, I'm mostly staying in hotels, mostly eating at restaurants that see tourists, stopping at gas stations more than other places, etc. I hardly ever "shop" while traveling.

So it may depend on your activities, as well as whether you're in tourist-expreienced places or not, as to how well swipe cards work for you, and how well chip cards for you.