JEFFJAGUAR

Now that I think about it....something like a dozen years ago, I went to a Las Vegas casino and went to the buffet. I never was asked to enter a pin yet it came through as a cash advance with the associated fees. I screamed bloody murder to the credit card company and it was reversed. Never could figure out how that had happened.

Also over the years, I have gotten many changes in terms re-classifying things like lottery ticket purchases as cash advances as well as the urchase of gold coins and things like that as well as making it clear if you purchase chips in a casino, it's a cash advance. It must have something to do with the way the transaction is entered into the pos terminal and there must be some mechanism for a merchant to indicate this is a cash advance (probably means a lower discount rate for them!)

kebosabi

Yeah, there's no such thing as American backpackers.

mia

This agrees with my understanding.

TravelPlan

That would be a false assumption based on my recent experience with Chase's J.P.Morgan Visa chip & signature card!

The J.P.Morgan card was accepted as a chip & signature card, but failed repeatedly in the Italian train kiosks. And this wasn't just odd rural stations, it failed in Florence, Naples & Rome too. Waiting in line to see a ticket agent took anywhere from 15 to 25 minutes, while people using the numerous kiosks were done in 2 minutes. TrenItalia kiosk transactions would fail immediately after a "Checking PIN" statement.

And get this: I called the International help number on the back of the card to ask if there was a work-around, and the customer service person said "That's outside the country (USA), we can't guarantee that the card will work in every kiosk."

I will be returning the J.P.Morgan card, and I will track-down a "real" chip & pin card to eliminate future frustration.

cvarming

This is a bit of a set back as I used my Chase Sapphire Preferred with only a mag stripe several times this summer to buy train tickets in self service machines at Florence SMN and in the Roman subway.

soitgoes

It's certainly possible that a Chip&Sig card could fail in some terminals that would work with a mag stripe card.

gerod

Also, I had a mag strip BA Visa card work in a couple of French parking kiosks where a Traveled Chip & PIN did not.

mia

Welcome to Flyertalk.

Did the kiosks prompt you for a PIN, or did they recognize that it was a Chip & Signature card and end the transaction without an opportunity to enter a PIN?

I don't think you can "return" a credit card in any meaningful sense. You can cancel it, but the credit inquiry and account entry will not be undone. However, what's the hurry if the first year's annual fee is waived? I don't think you will find a USA-issued Chip & PIN card today. All of the VISA issuers seem to have elected to start with Chip & Signature, and I expect these will morph into Chip & PIN when they implemented the PIN maintenance infrastructure.

Some MasterCard issuers have announced Chip & PIN, but (to my knowledge) none that are accepting applications are actually shipping today. Diners Club MasterCard USA is starting to send replacement cards with EMV chips, but they are not accepting new customers and they assess a 3% foreign transaction fee.

MrPink

Interesting. Turns out my annual fee was just a few days ago, and I was pretty set on cancelling. This probably doesn't make it worth keeping just yet does it?

garyschmitt

Did you try a non-Italian chip-pin card issued in the EU? Those might fail as well.

That's actually a very sensible statement, because some merchants will refuse all foreign cards regardless of whether the technology is compatible. Chase cannot guarantee what criteria merchants will use. If Chase were to guarantee foreign acceptance, they would have to issue you a card that internally stores a different card number for every country, and it would have to select and use a domestic number when it's read, as well as supply a billing address in that country. I'm not sure if that's even feasible.

Make sure you get it in Italy - that's the only way to definitively eliminate problems in Italy.

TravelPlan

Thanks Mia.

There was no prompting for a PIN during the transaction. I had selected English as the language, and after I chose the destination and service level the kiosk requested that I "Insert card", then it reported "Checking PIN", then ejected the card with a quick failure message in Italian. The process was repeatable in multiple locations.

What the J.P.Morgan folks had told me to expect at kiosks when I applied for the card: The kiosk would accept the card, and would process it as if a PIN had been entered. It worked that way in a parking lot, but failed on Italy's national train train system. There you needed a real Chip & PIN card.


True enough, but that's just semantics. No need to keep the card if it doesn't fully address the reason I got it in the first place, which was kiosks when traveling (I got trapped in a Stockholm parking garage, mid-winter, on a prior trip because I didn't have a chip & pin card to exit.) I do have other cards, including a Capital One that charges no forex fees.


Credit Unions are beginning to issue them, and my wife's CU has started a chip & PIN beta program. Here's a recent link from the trade journal Credit Union Times that describes what they see as the opportunity: http://www.cutimes.com/2011/11/03/em...become-a-flood

As far as "implementing the PIN maintenance infrastructure" (delay) is concerned, CHASE already offers full Chip & PIN on both Visa & MC in Canada, so they have the PIN infrastructure in North America, just not for their USA customers.

kebosabi

The next time American cardholders run into problems with Chip-and-PIN abroad, take a picture of where the mag-stripe fails abroad and send it with a letter to your respective banks along the lines of:

"I’m not paying $X in annual fees which fails me for international transactions because of different technology standards. Either you refund the annual fee or I’ll cancel my card."



This one picture alone helped me refund my annual fee for my US issued mag-stripe only credit cards. The sooner the banks realize that annual fee refunds from mag-stripe fail abroad starts to hurt their wallet, the faster they'll start issuing them.

mia

American Express also issues Chip & PIN cards in other markets, but has announced nothing in the USA. It's tempting to think of these trans-national banks as monoliths, but in fact the operations in various countries are largely separate due to licensing and regulatory requirements. USA based banks also have PIN maintenance infrastructure for their debit card businesses, but again the debit and credit card businesses appear to be segregated.

It's not that the banks don't know how to implement Chip & PIN, but rather that it more complicated than we think. See, for example, this thread about American Express Chip & PIN in Canada:

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

Please report back if you are able to participate in the credit union beta.

(In passing I note that last month in London and Vienna we encountered only one machine which would not accept a swipe card. It was the CAT rail service from the airport to central Vienna. Fortunately, we have a Chip & PIN VISA debit card from our UK bank. Oddly, we were able to use a swipe card to purchase the return ticket to the airport.)

Scifience

I had the exact same problem in Italy with two foreign-issued Chip & PIN cards, one from the UK and one from Japan. So, while I can't say this with 100% confidence, it seems likely that the real issue is something with foreign cards, not with the Chase Chip & Signature system.

jamar

You'd think that with the geography as it is they wouldn't block foreign cards. I mean, there has to be quite a few tourists, workers, and such from other EU member states, no?