One questions regarding AmEx not allowing DCC's: Does this include the Amex cards issued by third party banks such as Wells Fargo? Or is this limited to Amex cards issued by Amex themselves?

Thanks.

What do you mean "even"? US merchants only occasionally check signatures. Most hand your card back before you sign. Plenty of merchants demand ID in the USA, including Fry's). I don't believe I've had ID demanded for credit card use anywhere in the world other than the USA.

It's the Amex network.

As AllieKat mentioned the AmEx network doesn't support DCC, so even AmEx cards issued by third parties wouldn't see DCC.

I haven't had a vacation in Canada in a few years, but I have never seen DCC. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but I think like in the US it's a rarity.

I've got a few more charges from Hong Kong that I will scan in once they post. I'm now keeping a spreadsheet of the DCC offers to tabulate how much money I've saved. :D

Ever since I've decided to sign my cards several years ago, that was the first time I encountered this situation.

Then it happened again at HESS in NYC on 44th.

The only time I've asked to provide a ID in Australia is the cashier believed my signatures were different. I showed here my ID preemptively to show I am the cardholder.

I've been against PINs since I think signing a slip after dining is quite classy and convenient, but now I just hate Chip and Signature because in Canada/Australia/New Zealand/UK, if I go to self check out lane, I will always be stopped for signature verification, not like everyone else who can just input the pin and be on the way.

Wells Fargo Propel World is an amazing card. Be assured it will not get you DCCed.

Are you serious? You need to spend more time eating in HK than keeping spreadsheets~

I'm pro-C&S too but only in the US. PIN is simply not realistic at this time here because of merchant acceptance issues (borne out by personal experience). Whether this was self fulfilling because of Visa saying that signature is all the US needs, I don't know. That said, major banks should at least market a card or two with PIN priority towards international travelers, even if it has an AF.

Tmiw, I don't quite understand you - you've had a couple bad experiences (at least one later fixed it, if I recall correctly) and that makes you oppose PIN cards being issued in the US? It should be the opposite! If chip and PIN cards were ubiquitous merchants would happily accept them and worldwide everything would be basically the same.

Sorry, a couple growing pains are not reason enough to support the BS that is chip and signature. Were you opposed to chip and signature back when some US merchants were refusing to insert the chip?

I should preface what I'm about to say with my own personal day to day experience since I feel that's important in order to describe better why I prefer C&S domestically, at least in the short term. I think we can also agree that chip and PIN will not pose a problem anywhere that can already handle debit or otherwise already has a terminal on the customer side of the counter (e.g. grocery stores, Walmart, etc.)

The first time I use a credit card in a particular day is usually a local donut/breakfast type shop on the way to work. There's two I usually go to, neither which are chains; one is cash-only while the other takes cards. The latter's terminal is behind the counter and isn't easily accessed by me. Sometimes I'll just use the vending machine at work instead (also cash only or cards depending on the machine).

I also don't typically bring food from home for lunch so I usually have to go out for lunch. There are several places I tend to visit that are within walking or short driving distance, all which aren't chains, take cards and which have terminals that are inaccessible to me. Once in a very long while I'll go to somewhere that has a terminal on my side of the counter, such as Subway, McDonalds or Rubios.

The common theme here is that a lot of my in-person spending is at smaller merchants. In fact, chain store spending for me is mostly places like Trader Joe's and Vons (what Safeway is called here), which I'll go to about once a week or two.

I will grant that none of these places have EMV turned on yet and a large number seemingly haven't even purchased new terminals. However, I have run into a large number that have placed said new terminals in pretty much the same places their old ones were. Which works for now while EMV isn't turned on, but another thing makes me think that the positioning of the terminal may not change.

There are also a few with new terminals that are on MasterCard's PayPass locator site now, which means that Apple Pay/Google Wallet should in theory be accepted. Of course, in reality I can't even tap my card or phone because I can't reach over the counter to do so. If merchants that supposedly accept Apple Pay (arguably the payment industry's best chance at getting contactless to be accepted by Americans) can't be convinced to change their terminal positioning, I'm not sure how EMV is going to pan out once it's turned on.

Which all leads back to this: do I want to try to walk someone through how to turn on the NFC reader on a terminal or even convince them to try moving the terminal, if that's possible? During a busy lunch rush? No. I'm going to do the path of least resistance, which is to hand over my CSP or some other C&S card for swiping/inserting. I'm also not going to rely on PIN bypass because I'm not sure BMO will even approve such a transaction. And if they don't, I'm going to have the give the merchant a C&S card anyway or pay cash.

I will grant you though that C&P is preferable security-wise over C&S. It's also still significantly early in the EMV migration. A large number of smaller merchants will probably still be magstripe only by October as well, or will possibly adopt signature only terminals like Square or one of those POSes with a chip slot in it that someone posted about over in the EMV thread. It's also still possible that acquirers will finally start training merchants on correct terminal use and we'll see terminal positioning become a whole lot better. But right this very second, C&S is a lot easier for me while in the US.

I think that the main problem with chip + pin is that people think that it's secure, but it isn't.

I do not want to move to a system where your card is presumed to be secure and so the burden of proof shifts to the customer to show that fraudulent charges are actually fraudulent. With the magstripe system, the cards are insecure, everyone knows it, and I don't care because I'm not responsible for fraudulent charges. I like this system. I have had fraudulent charges on my card and it has never been anything more than a minor inconvenience. It's very consumer-friendly, and, as a consumer, I like that.

BTW, I will also admit that I would probably try a bit harder to get a future C&P card accepted if it offered bonus points at a certain class of merchant. ;) For the time being my only "true" C&P card is 1x for everything so for a lot of my spending, other cards that happen to be C&S earn at better rates depending on the merchant.

According to US law, it's still on the issuers to prove it: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/1643. Without this law, they would have probably tried to pin the charges on you anyway even if magstripe. Also, some of the current chip and PIN vulnerabilities are no longer an issue if online PIN is used instead of offline PIN.

I understand that. The question is, what constitutes proof? I believe that in other jurisdictions the fact that a PIN was entered is considered sufficient proof that the use was authorized.

I am not saying that this will happen here; I'm just saying that the belief that something is secure when it is not can lead to things like that happening.

tmiw, you're not getting the underlying reality - if every issuer was issuing chip and PIN cards, merchants wouldn't have a choice to be ***** and refuse PIN transactions, thus chip and signature is making the problem exist, not solving it.

That's like saying you are against seatbelts in cars, because if someone dies in an accident, the insurance company will say that they probably weren't wearing a seatbelt and refuse to pay, but if there was no seatbelt installed then they won't be able to make that excuse and they will need to pay out, so it's more consumer-friendly. :p

This is probably getting way off topic for the DCC thread, but I wonder how merchants in other countries that were originally C&S handled initially switching to C&S. My only experience with such a country is Australia and they were already well on their way to switching to C&P when I was there.