kebosabi

Why fly to Iceland when you can just go to our neighbor up north, Canada?

JimboM1391

Received my quarterly Marriott Rewards statement in the mail yesterday and the ad for their credit card had an image of a card with an EMV Chip. I called Chase to see if I could switch my card over to the card in the image and the operator had no idea what I was talking about. Wondering if Marriott released the image of the card before the folks at Chase had originally intended. Let's hope they convert - my card was turned down a few times by merchants in The Netherlands that didn't know how to process a card with a magnetic strip.

mia

While it's true that Chase cards are all Chip & Signature, it's nearly impossible that entering a PIN in a POS machine would magically convert a purchase into a cash advance. I realize that's what you were told, but it's beyond implausible.

dw

I saw that as well and was initially excited, but I believe the chip card they showed is actually the Canadian version of the card.

Shedendblue

Just applied for the JP Morgan/Chase card today, and it should be getting here in the next few weeks. As I am an American living in Germany, I should have ample opportunities to try the card out once it gets here (with the added luxury of having a German bank chipped card as a backup in case it doesn't work). Main reason I got the card was for purchases at stores that don't accept non-chipped cards (Obi/Ikea/Edeka/etc), but I'm willing to try out other locations with different cards to see what works where.

Once it gets here, I'll post again for suggestions on what places to check...

JEFFJAGUAR

So...we can assume that basically the chip and signature cards work; while chip and pin would be better which leads to the inevitable question.....why isn't Chase making the card available for all its acounts? Some of the critics here babble garbage abut liability laws with chip and pin and the lack of a signature, and there chip and signature will sort of work while all the legalities are worked out for chip and pin. So fine. It works. The Chase system accepts the card. So why are they being so stingy in its roll out? I just can't grasp the logic and you note for the most part the chip and signature cards are only being issued to cards with high annual fees. So...it leads to the conclusion, and I know it's no surprise, that Chase, at least, is trying to use the chip carrot to entice people to sign up for the cards with higher annual fees increasing their profits and not being interested in the welfare of their customers.

Is that a good read of the situation?

jamar

It does seem that right now, every single American chip card out there has an annual fee and that there are zero debit chip cards. Have to head north of the border if you don't want to screw around with (or put up the minimum balance for) a certain someone's preferred solution of Barclays UK.

OverThereTooMuch

Since it involves a bank trying to find ways to get more fees from a customer, I'd say that it's entirely plausible.

Why do you believe that this isn't possible? It's just a matter of how the transaction is processed. It's possible that the system could try several different types of transactions before eventually hitting the POS option.

There may be policies/guidelines in place that describe how cash advance transactions are supposed to be processed, and likely including some explicit approval from the person making the purchase, but it wouldn't be the first time someone didn't adhere to the merchant guidelines.

Or are you saying that there's a technical limitation here that prevents this from happening?

kebosabi

As far as I know about EMV/mag-stripe hybrid cards over in Canada and Japan, it's usually set up as:

PIN via swiping the mag-stripe (i.e. using a Canadian issued VISA card at an ATM machine in Japan) = treated as cash advance
PIN via inserting the contact EMV chip (i.e. using a Canadian issued VISA card at a restaurant in Japan) = treated as a normal purchase

send out a signal" to the card company, if it's swiped and entered with a PIN, it's treated as a cash advance. In contrast, if it's inserted into the slot and recognizes the EMV chip, the PIN entry is treated as a normal purchase.

cbn42

Sounds good to me. Any American who is traveling to Europe is obviously rich and can afford to pay a high annual fee, so why not charge it?

Once a few banks start issuing chip cards with no annual fee, Chase will quickly eliminate or reduce it. But it will take time, because the percent of Americans interested in these cards is extremely small.

EUnomad

It's probably technically feasible, considering what happened with the U.S. mint. The US mint was trying to promote their $1 liberty coins, to get people interested in coins instead of paper. They allowed the coins to be purchased with a credit card. Even though the transaction was more accurately described as a cash advance, it was characterized as a purchase so consumers were not at a loss for trying coins. However, it became popular for consumers to abuse this, and rack up rebate credit, and then break the rules and cart a hand-truck full of coins into their bank and exchange for bills. I think they re-characterized it as a cash advance now to mitigate the abuse.

From a legal standpoint, in the case of a genuine purchase of goods in Asia, I don't see how it is legal to characterize the purchase transaction as a "cash advance". The internal processing of the transaction doesn't matter, but if the card holder is charged for a cash advance when they did not get a cash advance, it's theft. How could the bank defend charging the customer for a service they did not receive?

dgcom

I this case you think wrong. It is easy to check - usmint.gov site has this on the page for Circulating $1 Coin Direct Ship Rolls:
They just basically stopped accepting credit cards all together. And in addition to that, they added "order fulfillment charge of $12.50 for each box of $1 Coins" making it now even less convenient to get them.

But back on the topic - as far as I know, it does matter which part of EMV card is used - mag stripe + pin = cash advance, chip + pin = purchase.

cvarming

This is complete nonsense. I have performed countless mag stripe + pin transactions in Europe and they have all been coded correctly as purchases. It is the coding of the transaction done by the merchant that matters, not how the transaction is authorized.

dgcom

You may be right. I just wrote what I was told long ago. I believe, if you try this in US, you may easily end up with cash advance with purchase in grocery store.

EUnomad

POS terminals in the US are capable of getting this right. They can even do a split transaction. If you buy $10 in groceries and ask for $20 back in cash, the $10 will be properly recorded as a purchase transaction, an the $20 will be properly recorded as a cash advance.