I asked where I could buy the Chip & PIN card in the Miami area and they provided four locations, two airports (FLL, PBI) plus two others:

1303F SE 17th Street Causeway
In South Port Plaza
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, 33316

Ft Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport
100 Terminal Drive
2nd Level
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, 33315

6000 Glades Road
Boca Raton, Florida, 33431

Palm Beach International Airport
West Palm Beach, Florida, 33406

You could also do a drill down a search of Travelex locations here:
http://www.travelex.com/us/locations...tep=3&lang=ENG

Once you got a list, you click view details and it gives you a direct phone number to each location. Just call and ask if they provide the Chip & PIN Travelex card.

And it begins in Canada...

Gas station in Montreal, Quebec installs North America's first EMV gas pump
http://dmnnewswire.digitalmedianet.c...jsp?id=1278203


Pretty soon our US issued credit cards will become useless when we try to fill up our gas when driving in Canada. Big problem for Americans who frequently travel/do business up north, especially truckers.

I'm kind of surprised that TD and HSBC aren't making this offering already, considering they both already produce a large number of chip-and-pin cards. I know the TD Canadian properties aren't fully networked yet to the US properties, but there's still already the bank infrastructure to issue the cards, and just as US dollar denominated cards are a service many Canadian customers use, I'm sure chip and pin cards would also be fairly popular among US based frequent travelers, including travelers to Canada.

(BTW, I'm very excited about the new CIBC Visa debit card, finally, Visa debit cards in Canada - with chip-and-pin)

The argument can be said the same for Citibank; they issue Chip & PIN cards all over the world, they have the infrastructure to do so everywhere else, except the US. I mean how hard is it to ask Citibank UK to make a Chip and PIN Citibank AAdvantage Card for the American Citibank AAdvantage customers that wants one for a nominal fee?

Looks like EMV migration in the US is finally catching on and faster than expected, at least for Americans that want one as an option.

Oberthur Technologies answering card issuers' demands for EMV in the United States/Multiple EMV Launches confirm U.S. interest in EMV migration
http://www.oberthur.com/press_page.aspx?Id=274

major points in bold below:

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Oberthur Technologies, the world's second largest provider of smart cards in the U.S., has seen an increase in EMV demand from card issuers in the United States over the last several months - a result of increased demand from disgruntled US travelers...

Multiple launches from leading financial institutions are currently underway, for early 2011 deployment...

“Oberthur Technologies is actively working with issuers to provide an EMV option for Americans traveling internationally,” said Ferenczi, “we have the global experience coupled with U.S. based manufacturing capacity and card personalization solutions to deliver cards which meet issuers’ demands and cardholders’ needs."
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I wonder which major financial institution will be the first one to provide it as an option? BofA? Chase? Citibank? Maybe even :gasp: CapitalOne? :p

I speculate that Chase and Citi will not issue such cards soon and this will explain why they have abruptly started to offer cards with no foreign transaction fees. It's a preemptive strike to diminish the appeal of a Chip & PIN offering from one of their competitors.

I'm going to guess that American Express will be first, because they are both a card issuer and a network operator which makes it straightforward for them to assemble the resources needed to not only distribute the cards, but to authorize the transactions. American Express is already running EMV cards in Europe, it should be a straightforward extension.

I dunno, I put my bet directly the opposite of yours that it’ll be Citibank and Chase from the fact that the former already has experience in issuing EMV cards all over the globe and the latter from the expertise of issuing EMV capable POS terminals and software across Canada.

Both Citibank and Chase are also the major issuers of credit cards which earn frequent flyer miles across various airlines whose customer base already likely consists of frustrated international travelers. IMO, Citibank AAdvantage and Chase United/Continental cardholders would probably be the prime target of those said cards who’d be willing to pay an additional fee for a chipped card for use abroad. In other words, they may have waived the foreign transaction fees as a trade-off of us having to pay a yet-to-be-disclosed amount for an optional Chip & PIN card.

BTW, oddly Los Angeles doesn't have a Travelex exchanger at LAX. But I was able to contact the Travelex store in Torrance and they confirmed that they have the Chip & PIN Travelex cards there. If you reside in the LA area and have plans to visit Europe or the UK, I suggest getting your reloadable Chip & PIN foreign currency card(s) at:

Travelex
21712 Hawthorne Blvd #301
Torrance, CA 90503-7028
(310) 370-6344

Mon-Sat: 10:00am - 7:00pm
Sun: 11:00am- 5:00pm

Also confirmed from the Travelex agent in Torrance the option to buy them online will be available early next year, and the best way is to exchange directly with cash, a debit card, or a personal check since using a credit card will be charged as a cash advance. And though you do get better rates for exchanging more, the main purpose of the Chip & PIN card is to fill up gas, renting bicycles, paying for tollways and buying train tickets at automated machines (i.e.: most hotels and major retailers still accept mag-stripe processing) so topping up the minimum is perfectly fine.

Should be against Credit Cards Policies
 

The non-acceptance of valid US credit cards should be against the policies of the credit card company. There needs to be a system in place until the USA gets the cards with the chip. I cannot believe with all the technology we have in the USA we don't have the chips in all of our cards. Visa was started in California so I'm amazed that we are not the first country to use it.

I think they need to have an option to key in your information on the machines that only accept the chips. The scenario if you are stuck at an unmanned tollbooth that only takes the chip cards you could say that I have a valid credit card and you have breached the contract as I cannot use it with your service. It should not be the customer's fault that their card is not accepted.

Using Credit Cards abroad is better than cash as you can dispute any transactions and you can earn miles. What happens if you are going to make a big purchase like Opera Tickets and you want the miles it should be the merchants responsibility to work with the company to do the transaction another way.

You could say I only have the credit card for payment and it says that you accept Visa Mastercard etc so therefore you will need to accept the payment. Using a Debit Card is dangerous especially in Europe.

I am quite upset that the credit card companies are not saying "look you cannot use the chip system as other countries have not adopted it yet and you need to have a secondary way of taking the non-chip cards". If the cashier refuses to work with you then you are still entitled to the product as you have the intention to pay it would not be stealing since its not your fault that the machine is not working. I would eat my meal and then tell the merchant that I did not realize your establishment uses this system and my Debit card does not work. There needs to be a designation or something on the window saying" This Merchant only accepts cards with the chip" so you can move on if to one that accepts the normal way.

Sorry for my rant but I feel for those travelers who are stranded and the only thing they have is their credit card. A lot of ATMs swallow Debit Cards and on Sundays banks are closed. If any of the Credit Card Company executives are reading this you need to back the customers on this and tell the merchants who don't work with the customer you either need to get the swipe machine or else you won't be able to accept our card.

Simply put, it is against the policy of the credit card company. But the reality is, VISA and Mastercard ain't gonna pull the plug out of McDonald's UK, Carrefour France, Royal Dutch Shell, or the JR Shinkansen of Japan all whom which let VISA and Mastercard reap in billions per year in transaction fees alone. And no, the merchant ain't gonna spend millions in updating their SOP manuals for their minimum wage earning cashiers on how to process an antiquated method of payment that only Americans use, which probably make up less than 1% of their entire customer base.

All VISA and Mastercard can do in this case is to persuade US banks to "take another look at start issuing EMV cards for Americans." But US financial banks didn't want to because they didn't want to spend the money to do so. Waaah it's gonna cost us billions to upgrade the terminals, waaaah it's gonna cost us money to issue those cards, we're fine the way it is over here, we make billions in corporate profits by cheating our customers and almost tanking the economy and being bailed out by taxpayers but we won't pay a single dime to upgrade because I want to keep my corporate jet, my yacht and the villa in Florida, etc. etc.

You know that money is the only thing that drives America, not customer benefit or satisfaction. Most likely the only thing that made US banks finally move their butts and take a serious look at this are a) when they started realizing how much money they were losing every year from foreign transaction fees because more Americans were unable to use their cards abroad and/or b) they started realizing that card skimming is on the rise in the US (read the news everyday, there's always a story about criminal gangs and thieves being caught with skimmed credit cards) and it's beginning to hurt their revenue.

At least according to Oberthur, multiple US financial institutions are preparing a launch for this by early next year so it won't be much wait longer. Even the introduction of a US based pre-paid Chip & PIN card by Travelex was a good enough as it finally gave us an option when we didn't nothing up until now. Knowing that other US banks are getting onboard, it's about friggin' time.

I'm going to go pick up one of these Travelex cards tomorrow. The lady at the Houston Galleria that I talked to on the phone said that the minimum recharge on those is 125 Euro. I'll report on using it when I go to Germany in a few weeks.

Anyone in the financial/banking industry who has access to American Banker?

There's an interesting article out today regarding EMV Poised for Take Off in the US which begins the article with "Several top U.S. issuers plan to issue EMV cards within the next year to certain cardholders, most likely international travelers hoping to avoid problems making purchases and..."

Would like to read a summary of what this article says.

You have a PM