Originally Posted by
alexmt
ATMs are online and will tell you nothing. Without running custom code as mentioned above, you literally will not find a place in the US (and probably Canada) that will use the offline PIN of that card. There are only a handful of terminals in the world that will require it.
Agreed, and again, I am not looking to verify the offline pin on the chip, or even online pin using the chip. All I want to do is the most basic first step: verify that the pin I believe is correct and thus enter at the ATM actually is the same pin recorded in the bank's record for that card WITHOUT triggering a potential ATM or card issuer fee now by actually DOING a cash withdrawal/advance or balance inquiry, so that I can now have confidence that I can LATER actually do a cash withdrawal/advance or balance inquiry successfully at any ATM here or abroad (and suffer the fees, if any, at that time). The ATM used to let me know when the pin was wrong without attempting any actual transaction, but they "improved" it to waste my time by getting to the end of a transaction before bailing and even then only now provide a message that is generic and doesn't reveal whether the pin was the issue. Thus, I only know if the pin was correct by the transaction completing without any error - too late to prevent any fee from being assessed.
Hope I finally got it clearer.
Once the online pin is known to be correct, only then can the pin on the chip verification process be pursued. Currently that only seems possible abroad due to virtually universal chip and signature priority of US issued cards, except for Diner's Club MC and UN FCO (only cards currently having pin priority?)