Since we are all frequent fliers, I would assume that since most of us collect miles, most of us have Continental MasterCards and that most of us, who are Continental’s best customers, travel abroad. It is therefore inexcusable that Chase bank refuses to provide us with a MasterCard that has the embedded chip necessary to use many of the cash, ticket and credit machines in Europe. They are not even considering it. We need to start a letter writing campaign to Chase demanding that they provide those travelers who need it the cards we need when abroad. Chase puts out the misinformation that the chip is really not necessary, but travelers can tell them otherwise. For example, at Charles DeGaulle, the machine that should have dispensed the tickets that I had ordered from the French National Railroads, refused my card because it didn’t have the European chip. What should have been a two-minute encounter with a machine turned into a thirty minute wait on a line.
Add your horror stories, and let’s get the letter writing to Chase started.

It's not just chase. I had a similar such issue in Munich at the railway station -- could not find a machine that took a magstrip credit card, though all machines took credit cards.

Fortunatley I had cash, and just paid that way vs. finding a human.

OK then, all of us who are world travelers must deluge the issuing banks with demands for cards with the chip. Nobody wants to carry large amounts of cash when travelling for any length of time. This is a society now largely based on plastic rather than case. Chase and others owe us cards that functgion worldwide. The USA is no longer the center of the universe.

My CO world MC has a chip in it. I use at some stores where you can just wave the card in front of a swipe terminal and it charges the card. Are the EU chips you are talking about a different animal?

Here's a long thread from a CC forum.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/other...-chip-pin.html

Yes - different animal. What you're describing is a contactless RFID chip. Europe has standardized on a contact-based smart chip design. AFAIK, it's not just a Chase issue, but really a MasterCard/Visa issue.