This location is EMV enabled and uses Verifone terminals (at least in the self-checkout). I did not look at the attended lanes. Wanted to get out of there as fast as possible!

Imagine my surprise when the cashier at my local Popeyes without prompting inserted my Chase Sapphire Preferred into the First Data FD130 terminal:

http://i.imgur.com/QnDeyb5t.jpg

This was my first real EMV transaction in the US. The Walmart ones were my own doing since the cashier would have likely swiped the card.

One thing I did notice was that this terminal supports DCC as an option. :td: I don't know if I'll be able to test this though since my wife doesn't like me using her Taiwan Visa debit card to test for DCC. :D I'm reading up on the terminal now to see what the prompts would be in the case of DCC and how to walk the cashier through voiding a sale if things go south.

MOST FD130's and FD100/FD200's with FD35 PIN pads are EMV enabled, though one local merchant has FD100's with FD35 PIN pads where they swipe the card (PIN pad isn't customer facing) and it allows swipes. Haven't quite figured out the point in the PIN pads and I wonder if they aren't even configured, just physically plugged in (explaining why EMV isn't enabled).

This one didn't have the separate PIN pad visible. I don't have any contactless cards, so I can't test that functionality. Also, all of my cards are chip-and-signature, so I can't see how the cashier would react. I am curious whether or not DCC is enabled though.

The San Jose Mitsuwa doesn't have things activated outside of the independent retailer Matcha Love (an ice cream store in the food court). The popular ramen place is cash only, and Books Kinokuniya was still swipe-and-sign as of December.

The FD130 does not require a PIN pad for contact/contactless EMV. The FD100 and FD200 do.

The fees are pretty bad, but would something like Travelex's card trigger DCC?

That's an idea I haven't thought about before, but it should work. I would be getting hit with fees on both ends there (currency exchange/DCC + Travelex's poor exchange rate), but perhaps a lower barrier to entry than dragging my significant other around town to test various merchants to see if there is DCC.

Why bother? It's semi-interesting but you'll never catch every DCC merchant, and there's nothing you can do about it. I mean, if DCC-catching is your hobby, sounds interesting - but still...

It's certainly not the most cost effective method, but it could be good for collecting data points. It's just like not every merchant with EMV enforces the service codes. I am passionately against DCC, but it's also based on my curiosity. I've never actually seen a DCC transaction stateside and besides known DCC implementations such as DFS I haven't seen "pay in your currency" signs.

Since terminals usually use BIN (or maybe Application Currency Code if EMV) to determine DCC eligibility I wonder if the Travelex card will be detected as a USD card and thus not get DCC'd at all here. Alternatively it might actually know it has more than one currency and give you more than two checkboxes, heh.

I could be mistaken, but I don't think more than one box is possible. I assume the cash passport card would have to have a 'native' currency assigned.

On a related subject of Bay Area Japanese supermarkets, the Nijiya in Mountain View POS works with contactless even though the screen doesn't display the contactless symbol. Just tap your RFID chip on the screen. I do not have Apple Pay, but I don't see why it wouldn't work with it. The EMV reader is not yet active as of about three weeks ago.

North Beach Garage in San Francisco - 735 Vallejo St
 

I park at the North Beach Garage in the North Beach neighborhood of SF about once a month or so, and ever since I've been using my CSP since August, every cashier has recognized the chip on the card and run it as an EMV transaction. I'm not sure if their reader has PIN capability since they keep it behind the window. This is the newer garage across from the older "Vallejo Street Garage" with the police station on the ground floor.

I'm always shredding my receipts so I don't have one on hand at the moment, but the ones I remember do say "Entry Method: Chip Read" on the bottom.

I could've sworn that there was another city-owned garage that has a chip reader; it might've been the Golden Gateway garage near the Embarcadero.

If they swipe it, it'll make them insert the chip anyway. Would be curious to bring them a chip and PIN card and see what hassle it causes, as I'm sure from the description that you have it's a First Data terminal, those are all PIN-ready. Let's see the chaos as they have to figure out a way to get you to enter the PIN :D If you're really daring, have no other form of payment with you so they HAVE to take the chip and PIN card.

This is why I wish everyone in the US was issuing chip and PIN, it's not just for travel. It's to force merchants to be PIN ready. Otherwise, Europeans here will have the same problems. Using different technologies in different countries is ridiculous.