Steve in Olympia

My Chase chip-and-signature worked fine at ticket kiosks in the London tube, as well as the ticket kiosks at Kings Cross/St. Pancras train station. I have had no problems with it in France or England. Swipe cards, not so much.

qvzn

Used the chip method somewhere in .nl this December, but it was one of those wireless devices that also has a swipe, so no advantage there

I don't see how chip+signature can be used at an unmanned, offline station. The whole point of chip+pin is that the station doesn't need to online verify the card--it can trust the chip and upload the transaction later. Since chip+sig provides no such protection, the station has to be online, and at that point taking swipe is trivial

Being unable to pay for parking or train tickets in [most of] Europe

In contrast, the parking meters in Los Angeles take swipe cards. I think they're all GSM stations. My guess is that the GSM hardware+bandwidth pays for itself in the form of notifying them as soon as the meter expires so they can write the ticket ASAP

X3Skier

This year, I have used my Chase BA Chip and Sig card in Reyjavik, London, Vienna and Budapest. Most times, the machine spits out a receipt for signing but on a few rare occasions not. Never had to swipe in any location.

Cheers

dcborn61

Had been excited to get the Marriott Chip and Signature card before a trip to South America. It didn't turn out so well. I'd estimate that at least 50% of the time in Argentina, the merchant could not get the chip or the magnetic swipe to work. I was forced to use my mag stripe American Express Card instead.

In Uruguay, a restaurant and a large ice cream chain (Freddos) could not get the card to work. A small merchant however got the pin to work on the first try.

Hoping for better luck in Europe.

tmontemb

It appears your question has been answered above. However it did work in some places where I have been hit or miss with a mag stripe, but I am guessing that is more to user error. To me, not having to explain to a teenager that they can swipe it and how to do it, vs just putting the chip in is still a benefit. This is even if there are still problems in kiosks.

My recommendation then would be to carry an 'emergency' travelex prepaid chip n pin card for emergencies where it fails, such as train stations, etc.

YMMV but I had great experience with that card in a pinch.

kebosabi

I stray away from using the magnetic swipe credit card at the parking meters. It's too easy for skimmers to place skimming devices onto them.

Happy

I think the discussion on Chip and Signature from whether Chase or Citi or BofA is useless because they all operate the same way - if the merchant's processing system is online then ANY of such chip + signature card works because either you dont need to enter a PIN or the PIN is verified online (Citi's Cash Advance PIN works just fine when a Trenitalia kiosk wanted me to enter PIN for the purchase of a train ticket).

However if the processing is OFFLINE, you are SOL regardless which bank in US issued your Chip + Signature card because the PIN is not stored in your card's chip.

The train station ticketing machines at Vienna could not recognize my PIN + Signature cards from Citi, BofA and Chase. Same for most unmanned gas stations in France. Though at any supermarkets and restaurants the cards worked fine because they are online transactions.

While at supermarkets, manned ticket offices, and even McDs, all you need is to stick the card in the slot just like the Chip + PIN card because those processing systems are ONLINE.

kebosabi

I think what many banks in the US fail to recognize is the abundance of offline transactions in most parts of the world where mass transit is primarily used to travel around.

It costs a lot of infrastructure to put in dedicated and secure communication lines to each and every one of those multiple kiosks in each and every station across the city and the country, let alone keep the transactions fast enough to keep millions moving everyday. In such instances, it makes perfectly good sense for many transit agencies around the world to use faster and cheaper "read the PIN from the chip" offline transactions.

Unfortunately, since the car is king in the US, that image fails to connect with most people who work at financial institutions in the US because even bankers fill up their Mercedes and BMWs at the local gas station to go to work at BofA, Chase, and Citi.

qvzn

I agree with the main premise here--that the US banks don't understand why chip+sig is useless for int'l travel

--but I have a harder time with this argument. Getting things online used to be a problem, but it no longer is, because we have a solution: GSM (for example). The same station with multiple offline kiosks might now also have a "bus/train in N minutes" type of display, which is either online or worthless. Many times it's online, so there's no block to using this technology (or getting it online in whatever way they do). No, the only problem is that the offline kiosks are already there and they don't want to change that. If it works, don't fix it--understandable

US banks have the same lack of desire to change. They like online verification--it's the best way to reduce risk and it gives them more immediate information to feed into their systems. Additionally, the chip+pin method is probably bad for consumers--I bet the bank will be a lot less sympathetic about fraudulent charges, saying it was your fault for losing the PIN. This element--moving more fraud risk from the bank to the consumer--is a big reason why banks have any interest at all in EMV

So--I'd like Europe to get with the datacom revolution program, but until then, I'd also like to be able to pay for parking

JEFFJAGUAR

Do you really think they give a flying you know what? We've been discussing emv chipped cards for a couple of years and the growing use of them especially in Europe and the growing problems many travellers face in using the antiquated American magnetic strip cards. Let somebody break the ice and like a stack of dominoes, everybody would chime in.

Well both Chase and Citi have, to the best of my knowledge, not made emv cards available on any of their pedestrian free cards' only the ones with hefty fees. Bank of America did introduce a couple of emv cards for the masses in August but seems to have stalled. The three DC area credit unions we've been discussing here (Andrews, SD, Pen) have issued them but only on request and it's taken a while with some of them to get their application procedures under control.

The fact is the American banking system just doesn't care. They don't seem to think world travellers are all that important part of their business while this forum is made up of many who do quite a bit of travelling producing this conflict. The banks' attitude is best exemplified by the answer customer service reps at Capital One are trained to give to people who complain about their cards not having emv chips ("Visa regulations require merchants to accept all cards whether chip or not. Tlry telling that to an unpeopled kiosk in France trying to buy petrol on a Sunday afternoon with your Capital One credit card and see what kind of an answer you get).

Then there's the other thing we have talked about i.e. merchant liability laws and the like which have been brought up in those places where an American uses a chip and signature card and the merchant says no pin no cookie or whatever.

One gets the feeling the Americanb banks just don't want to be bothered with a technology they consider already outdated and sort of have made chip cards available to quiet down the complainers but don't really care whether or not they are really all that useful.

Are chip and signature cards really better than non chipped cards in Western Europe? I would suppose marginally so but quite frankly in the parts of Europe I visit the most, while I have several chip cards, I have come across only one merchant who insisted he doesn't take magnetic stgrip cards and when I used my chipped card, the transaction was declined whether vy my bank or it simply didn't go through.

So much for the chip cards. I get the feeling the American banks simply wangt or expect the thing to go away.

DCBob

Yearn no more - those days are back! As of today: 1.00 USD = 100.346 JPY

pgary

Today I called Chase to see if my British Airways card was available as a chip and PIN card. Rep said chip and signature only. He tried to convice me that this would be enough in Europe. I said not if I was trying to pay a toll or buy a rail ticket at an unattended kiosk. He said in the "rare" times that the machine insists on a PIN, I could put in a default PIN, which he gave me. I won't repeat it here for obvious reasons, but I would bet any card thief worth his salt knows it. I said no thanks to Chase's chip and signature card, and would be very cautious about any future Chase chip and PIN card.

So, how about everyone calling your bank about your chip and PIN card, asking if there is a default PIN. Please report results here. Thanks.

dw

Was the "default PIN" 0000? I believe sometimes that works at unattended kiosks for Chip & Signature cards.

Sal5048

I used 0000 at the metro station in Barcelona with my Marriott Chip & Sign card. It worked at some machines but not all.

pgary

So you guys want to provide that PIN to every credit card thief reading this forum? May I suggest you quickly edit your posts? Sheez.