Whether the technology is EMV/PIN/contactless/whatever, don’t forget that there’s still a human element to electronic payments. Even the best designed and maintained technology doesn’t function perfectly 100% of the time. Human beings definitely don’t function perfectly 100% of the time, let alone the way we sometimes want them to.
Sometimes technology isn’t the issue; it’s what the human involved does or doesn’t do with it.
1. As
reclusive46 indicated upthread, some toll roads in France accept some credit cards but not others. Thus the inconsistency in acceptance lies with the companies that staff the toll booths, not with whether or not one’s credit card has a chip.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/credi...l#post23420726
2. A British customer in a French supermarket blanked on the PIN to her brand-new chipped credit card. The cashier wouldn’t let her sign for the purchase, and the customer left empty-handed.
http://www.indexcreditcards.com/fina...in-france.html
3. A Swiss man who has a French credit card incorrectly entered his PIN three times at a SNCF train station kiosk. After the third attempt, he was locked out and went to the station staffed window to collect his prepaid ticket. But the credit card used for the purchase has to be active to collect a ticket, from either machine or human. The three failed PIN entries at the kiosk had temporarily deactivated his card.
http://www.eurocheapo.com/blog/franc...in-french.html (comment by
George Raymond on July 11, 2011)
4. Just this past July, a visitor to Germany presented his chipped credit card to the front desk at a small hotel. The clerk couldn’t accept it for two reasons: she had only a carbon copy imprint machine; and the numbers on the guest’s card were printed not raised.
http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Cred...3263704/page/2 (comment by
Mailak)
5. A merchant might fib that his credit card machine is down, hoping you’ll pay cash and he’ll save the credit card company fee. Restaurants in Hungary have been known to give the card-machine-down story when business had been slow, and they needed the cash infusion.
http://www.frommers.com/destinations....Asmh8B3z.dpbs
6. Before visiting London last year, I read in the British press that chip-and-PIN credit cards were pushing criminals toward good old-fashioned strongarm robbery of ATM users. They’d shoulder-surf someone to get the PIN, then snatch the card right out of the user’s hand. When I got there, I saw that Britons don’t form the ATM queue out of shoulder-surf range. At one store I found myself too close to the customer ahead of me in line, and looked away in case he used the credit card terminal.
Me, I’m not one to put all my payment option eggs in one basket in a foreign country. Things can happen that neither customer nor merchant has any control over. In any event, I’d never assume that I can always use my credit card.
Back to our regular EMV discussion.