American Express USA to begin issuing EMV "chipped" cards in late 2012
 

http://about.americanexpress.com/new...v_roadmap.aspx

The articles does not specify if the USA-issued cards will be Chip & PIN or Chip & Signature, but most USA VISA and MasterCard issuers have chosen Chip & Signature because PIN adds little value in an online verification system and because the USA ATM network does not support PIN changes.

Please discuss in this thread until American Express announces more specifics:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/credi...signature.html

I called Amex and worked my way up the ladder of CSR's,to be told that USA issued Platinum and Centurion card holders would be able to request chip-and-PIN cards as of November 21, 2012. The CSR will inquire if European travel is planned.
When asked if this is Chip and Pin rather than Chip and Sig, the CSR said her notes stated it will be Chip and Pin.
Let's see if this really comes to pass.

Sweet. Been a long time coming. Sick of not being able to use automatic underground kiosks on London...

Take it with a grain of salt. My Canadian Platinum card with Chip & PIN still only works in a Chip reader about 10% of the time (it always asks to swipe instead), and we've had Chip & PIN in Canada for quite a while now.

Sounds more like a dodgie chip, I once had a visa that was faulty and needed replacing because of the exact same thing.

If the roll out for USA Amex chip and pin is the same as the UK, I imagine all the Charge Cards will get and then it'll be ages before anything else gets one.

No, it's a common problem that I've heard about with the Canadian SPG Amex - I think Amex Canada's implementation has some bugs.

Oh right, sounds like Amex's implementation of contactless in the UK. It never works, you just get "Contactless transaction unsuccessful". The only place it does work is McDonalds.

Moderator action
 

Row2's report and replies thereto have been moved into a more recent thread.

Problems with the Canadian Chip & PIN rollout are discussed here:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...verywhere.html

So true. I welcome the upgrade!

I wonder if the Mercedes-Benz Platinum card will be included, or if it'll just be the standard platinum card. And if it turns out to be Chip & PIN, that'll be huge.

I hope it really is chip & pin and not chip&signature. Crossing my fingers

I would make sense that American Express would choose Chip and Pin. In Europe the banks chose chip and pin, not Visa or MasterCard, American Express did have a choice though as its separate from the other card networks and they still went chip and pin.

I really do not care chip & pin or chip & signature. My Chase BA visa worked just fine in all the machines in France, Germany, Switzerland. I am just happy to get the chip.

My AMEX ( German) Gold card already has a chip. Sometimes when I buy something I have to enter the pin and other times not. Don't understand that however, I think the pin and chip is a good idea.

Yep - I can confirm that my October-issued Amex Gold had a chip, but the chip doesn't work in many places. So far, I've only got it to work at the McDonald's by where I work (they have upgraded CHIP machines)...everywhere else, swipe and sign. And sometimes, I've had the 'looping' problem, and I need to use a different card ('looping' - where it asks to insert chip card, then asks to swipe, then asks to insert chip card, then swipe - and so on. Never actually authorizes...), but that isn't even store-dependent...it seems to be card-reader dependent...