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.

That is a terrible analogy.

If I am in an accident, a seatbelt may save my life.

Chip & PIN provides me with no benefit whatsoever.

I'm completely serious. More eating in HK feeds more DCC data points. :D

Many of the small dim sum places are cash only, so DCC isn't usually a factor. I've got three DCC transactions that will post over the course of the next few days, and I'll report back.

There's really two sepearate issues here:

1. Transition from magstripe to chip

2. Transition from signature-based verification to PIN-based verification.

The British/EU banking industry has done a great disservice in combining the two. There is absolutely no need to - here in HK, and in PRC, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and Australia (initially) (1) has been done without moving to (2).

(1) is an improvement for everyone on the whole. It really is like the introduction of seat belts or the Polio vaccine - a technological improvement with little downside for either bank or cardholder. There may be transition problems but once in place it really does cut down fraud.

(2) as as devious as DCC. At least in British-based Bills of Exchanges jurisdictions such as UK, Australia and HK, a bad signature is the bank's problem and not the customer's. What the UK banks have done is to introduce PIN-based authentication with DCC and surreptitiously move the liability for fraud from cardholder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_an...s.27_liability on the basis chip authentication (which is really a separate matter as the Hong Kong experience shows) should reduce fraud.

Although PIN authentication may seem more secure than a signature to Mrs. Jones on the High Street ("no-one checks a signature" is an approving remark I heard from such a Mrs. Jones from New Zealand) this is absolutely wrong from a legal point of view. From Bills of Exchanges law which later evolved to cheque law, a bad signature will release liability from the signer (cardholder) and also imposes liability on the person accepting the signature (the merchant) to satisfy himself the signer is who he says he is.

If your card is said to have been used on a Rolex purchase transaction in Switzerland authenticated by signature you can have your liability released by proving you've never visited Switzerland at the time of transaction (a pretty easy action for us Hongkongers since we can request Immigration Department Hong Kong to release our travel records to our bank).

If the transaction was authenticated by PIN then the banks can deny liability like ATM transactions and you have to prove the bank leaked card info...

The UK belatedly reintroduced fraud liability for banks in 2009 but banks still sometimes act as if it is for the cardholder to prove his PIN has not been compromised http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/s...ist-banks.html

Since HK is still chip and signature, how is merchant support for C&P cards? Are the terminals inaccessible to customers in some places? And do cards issued in HK generally have a PIN backup?

How does the transition from magstripe to chip help me (the carholder?). What added benefit does it provide to me?

At best, it's neutral from my point of view. Seat belts and the polio vaccine, on the other hand, can both save my life. I don't see how you can compare the two.

If that UPS agent at the warehouse had refused to take back the unopened box that the card thief ordered online and had shipped to my house (!) I'd probably would have had to pay for return shipping. That would have been a concrete financial loss for me, albeit a small one. Totally possible that compromise was from some website though due to them knowing my address, but if they did get my info from some brick and mortar store then chips could have helped.

Card terminals are not generally produced to cardholder.

C&p cards will be chip read but a slip will be produced for signature. I've not been told about problems for chip and pin cards in HK.

Even if my bank honours every chargeback claim I file, I will save time if I need not file any chargeback claim in the first place.

Also my card will have to be replaced less often - "higher availability"?

Interesting. The merchant acquirers there probably disabled all forms of PIN on the terminals since they probably didn't have HK-only machines built for them. Because the US is technically "chip and choice" acquirers probably aren't going to disable PIN on terminals here. Hopefully terminal positioning improves before October.

Huh?

Someone used one of my cards a few years back to buy some stuff online. I think they were trying to ship stuff to them but the website shipped to me instead. UPS was a bit reluctant to take the box back until I explained what happened.

Actually we do collect PINs for PRC Unionpay cardholders. Although Unionpay is progressively moving to chip (their chip - "PBOC 2.0" not EMV), the majority of the cards I see brought down from the Mainland are swipe cards and the verification convention is to require both a PIN and signature.

But I don't see this being done for Visa or Mastercard cardholders from overseas. Even oreck, who used a RBC card to pay at Rainbow.

A friend of a friend got drunk and bought a porsche off of ebay once. The best part was that he lived in New York and had nowhere to park it. So he found somewhere in New Jersey to park it and went to drive it on weekends.

Not that I'm suggesting that that's what happened to you :)

In your case, you would absolutely not have to pay for return shipping. You can just file a chargeback since the account use was unauthorized. You are under no obligation to ship it back at your expense.

FWIW, magstripe in no way requires that stores hang onto your creit card info after you use it. They just have poor security practices. I'm sure that they will continue to have poor security practices in the future.

True but I rather minimise unauthorised use then making my bank eat the loss. At the very least I still have to pick up the phone or log into internet banking and dispute line items.

In tmiw's case the card was used online so whether the card is chip or swipe would not have mattered. My wife had a similar experience this week http://www.hongkongcard.com/forum/fo...w.php?id=13859 but it appears the bank involved has compromised a whole bunch of card codes.

With regard to chip authenticated transactions, at least in the HK case there is still the cardholder's option to require the HK bank to prove the transaction has been authorised by cardholder. If the cardholder still possesses the card, and the travel records show the cardholder can't have travelled to the merchant, the bank is almost certainly on the hook for accepting a bad transaction. The merchant will have to prove fraud or complicity in fraud, and most will simply pay up than bother.

As with DCC, the default action/burden of proof is a significant factor. Thank goodness HK regulators are quite "reactionary" and are sticking with signatures.

Well with chip cards they can't - even better.

For EMV vs mag, I think EMV is harder to reproduce, and transaction details are less prone to data hacks, right?
It does not help in online transaction cases though for sure.

I saw this at Francfranc yesterday. A girl used a PRC UnionPay card (magstripe only) with a PIN right after I witnessed her friend had gotten hit with DCC on an RMB-denominated MasterCard. The DCC happened too quickly for me to intervene, and there would have been a language barrier anyway, so I stayed silent. For the UnionPay transaction, the cashier detached the terminal and handed it to the girl so she could enter her PIN.

AFAIK there is no such thing as a "RMB-denominated Mastercard" http://www.paymentlawadvisor.com/201...heir-struggle/

Your cardholder was going to pay 1.75% fee for selecting Mastercard for HKD http://creditcard.bankcomm.com/conte...f/120331-1.pdf

If your cardholder further selected DCC the 1.75% fee will be replaced by 4.2-4.5% DCC processor profit.

The idiotic thing was that since the cards are co-branded the cardholder can pay nil fee by selecting Unionpay directly.

If everyone was posted/converted today:

Direct charge to Unionpay: 100 HKD = 80.12 CNY http://www.unionpayintl.com/MainServ...exchangeRateEn

Charge to Mastercard: 100 HKD = 12.90 USD https://www.mastercard.com/global/cu...ion/index.html
Add 1.75% fee: 13.125 USD
Converted to CNY: 81.47 CNY http://www.boc.cn/sourcedb/whpj/enindex.html

DCC accepted: 100 HKD = 13.48 USD
Converted to CNY: 84.66 CNY

The Unionpay rate isn't exactly the best, but avoiding the 1.75% Foreign Currency Conversion Fee/4.5% DCC scalp and bank foreign exchange spread is definitely worth it.

I observe HK merchants generally offer PRC customers a choice of using the overseas card association or Unionpay without commenting on the merits of either. If I'm standing behind such a customer I will try to get him to say Unionpay as quickly as possible cos it's really the best for him and for me if he stops pondering the question.

This is good to know. I wasn't aware of the co-branded cards, so thanks for the detailed explanation. Francfranc's DCC scalp is 4.9%, and that would be a painful surcharge for someone who could have had none by using UnionPay. :(

Now lots of better dual-currency cards in China have no conversion fees for their Visa/MC part.

Interesting, UnionPay actually recommends using DCC in the US? (http://www.unionpayintl.com/column/e...SA/index.shtml)

Who do you think pays for the $5 billion in annual credit card fraud in the US?

If it is covered by the merchant, it is included in the cost of the items you buy. If it is absorbed by the bank, it comes from the fees you pay for banking, or it reduces the amount of your rewards.

Ultimately, one way or another, you are paying for it.

That is $15 per person. About 1/30 of a credit card sign up bonus.

You mean they only pass on the 1% Visa/MC part of the Foreign Currency Conversion fee or do the PRC banks absorb that too?

No. It's the opposite. They're recommending you select RMB and NOT USD.

Err no. Literally read they are recommending dual-branded cardholders accept DCC!


http://www.unionpayintl.com/column/z...SA/index.shtml

"如使用双标识卡，持卡人在美国无法选择银联网络支付，如商户提供动态货币转换服务（DCC），选择人民币 支付不通过银联网络结算！"

I can't get my head around it though - are the Visa/MC portion of the dual-branded cards now allowed to be denominated in RMB? I thought this was not allowed?