Seems like just across the border they are whizzing us by in EMV solutions where mag-stripe+EMV+contactless cards can be issued directly at branch offices.

A Canadian First: Sunova Credit Union Instantly Issuing EMV Debit Cards Leveraging the Everlink Instant Card Issuance Solution


So how hard is it for Americans to open up a Canadian bank account again?

Way harder than opening up an offshore account.

First of all, this is FlyerTalk! It's not Americans so much in general, it's FTers who want to earn every last mile/point they can, and that requires using a miles/point-earning credit card everywhere possible.

You think €50 is cheap??? That's about $70 or $75, and I pretty much never (in the US) have more than $40 in my wallet, and often just $10 or so. I go MANY MONTHS between using cash for anything other than coin-operated machines (laundry, etc) and giving tips (where the tip is separate from any other payment, eg, an airport parking shuttle driver). Once in a while I visit a museum or park that only takes cash, but typically that means they only charge about $10 or less.

My major US bank (Wells Fargo) only allows me to withdraw I think $300 a time (or is that the lmit per day?), so eating up 1/4 of that in what you call a "small" transaction sure sounds like a lot of cash to me!

Meanwhile, it sounds like you haven't been reading this thread long, because many of the complaints in western Europe are about unmanned gas stations and stuff like that, where paying by card is the only option, and yet they don't take swipe cards! The only way cash can help you in such a case is if you find someone else at the gas station who's willing to use their card if you give them the same amount in cash.

(Again, if you're a local, maybe you know how to avoid these unmanned gas stations. But a foreign traveler with a rental car, they may have gotten lost, underestimated when they'd need gas, etc.)

I agree with every last word in the above post. I spent a week in London this past February, madea withdrawal of £20 from an ATM and may have spent about £5 or £6 in cash the entire week, no different from the way I live at home and to me, the only way to travel.

I'd rather just carry a plastic that can be used anywhere so I don't have to fumble with stuff like loose change or carry around 100s of dollars worth of currency in my wallet.

Heck I barely even use US dollars in the US either. At most I have a $20 bill in my wallet. Everywhere else I just use my debit and/or credit card. It's not an addiction, it's just convenient like owning a cell phone and not having to search for a public phone.

FYI: If you call Wells Fargo will raise the daily withdrawal limit to a max of $500.

This is a classic straw man argument. My comment was about Americans, and that's what my comment refers to, not FT users globally. To address my comment in the context of FT usrs changes it.

You need to check your math against the big mac index. €50 buys ~14.79 big macs. $70-75 USD buys ~18.77-20.11 big macs. 50 EUR of buying power in the eurozone is less than the buying power in the US after an even exchange at todays exchange rate. In short, if you need 50 EUR cash in europe, it would be comparable to needing to carry 50 USD in the US. (you actually need to carry a little more in Europe for cultural reasons, which I'll explain below)

Moreover, it wouldn't matter what index you use, because you've missed the point -- the point being that only small transactions would force someone to resort to cash in when facing an EMV-only PoS terminal.

You're making my point. This is not an EMV matter, it's a culteral difference. US consumers are entrenched in plastic transactions. There's nothing wrong with that, but this isn't the case in Western Europe, so it's an unreasonable expectation to show up in Europe (for example) and think you can do everything with a credit card like you can in the states. Europeans are not even close to being addicted to plastic. Many don't even have a credit card (bank cards and electronic purses are more popular).

The US doesn't even have the concept of an electronic purse, which is why Americans are conditioned to a single payment form. Europeans keep cash on hand because their payment systems are less homogeneous. It's quite normal in Europe to find lots of restaurants that only take cash.

You don't need half that much money for food and transport. The US per diem rates don't generally exceed $525 in Europe, for example, and the per diem figures are very generous - much better than average room and meals. Most of that per diem figure is for the hotel, and the hotel will take your magstripe credit card.

I never said there were absolutes. It's atypical for tourists to buy fuel (and we know this from the laws of supply and demand).

In so many words, I said plastic-addicts are painting a distorted picture, creating fear, uncertainty, and doubt that would mislead the typical traveler into paranoia that in itself causes more of an inconvenience (from over-preparation) than the actual situation they might deal with.

The only time anyone would ever need to consider the EMV situation as part of their trip planning is if they will be directly buying fuel, and not traveling with a local, in which case they only need to consider buying a prepaid gas card shortly after picking up the rental car.

So, you admit that you're addicted to plastic! ;)

Indeed, my point exactly. In the US, you can survive with just a credit card (but make sure it's US issued!). Step outside the US, and you ought to have cash -- even if you have every form of plastic available, some places are cash only, and some places only take domestic credit cards.

Have you had trouble with non-US-issued cards in the US? I've found that the most important thing is to have a card that's part of the Visa or MasterCard networks. There are far more places in the US that don't accept Amex (let alone JCB) than in Europe that only take cash :p

For JCB it usually works if you tell the cashier to "process it like a Discover Card." I think it's also the same with China's Union Pay.

No, I only use US cards in the US. But I know it's a problem, at least for online use. See wiredzones policy, and vector auto tuning. There are also various cases of US cards being rejected abroad, not due to technology but place of issue.

Well, online use is problematical anyway: with no signature, vendors can pretty much do whatever they want to protect themselves, up to and including just not doing business with you; I've seen this with Euro-zone online vendors as well, so that's no different. I just thought the idea that you had to watch out for using non-US-issued cards in the US was a little odd.

Last I heard filling up a gas tank costs way more in Europe than in the US. Yet for my high-fuel-efficiency (for a non-hybrid) car this week, I filled up on $50. So it would have been a lot more at an EMV-only PoS kiosk at an unmanned gas station. (Of course, now that I know this, I shouldn't let my gas tank go anywhere near empty in Europe.)
Ah, but what I forget to mention is, I don't care how much I can get day after day, because my bank charges me a steep fee for using an ATM at another bank (which of course I have to do, because my bank has no presence in Europe!). So I want to get my cash for the whole trip once if at all possible, which limits me to $300 or $500 or whatever for the whole trip. Now, in this case, I don't want to start "splurging" with the cash left and right early in the trip because that increases the risk that I'll run out. Also, aside from the fee, I've often had problems in Europe (in small towns, at least) where in one town there's one bank and it doesn't take my ATM card, and I have to go on to another town and find a different brand bank where my ATM card will work.

Also, I wouldn't mind so much getting much more cash than I need if I were in the EuroZone, since I can always save it for my next trip to another EuroZone country. But in case you missed it, I was asking about Hungary (Eastern Europe) when you answered about Western Europe, and Hungary is not official EuroZone (rather their own Forint), and so since this is quite likely to be my only ever trip to Hungary, any cash that's left over I'll have to convert back, and lose more money there.

I drive on maybe about 1/2 of my trips to Europe, and never with a local. (So far I've driven in Spain, Denmark, Ireland, UK, and Norway, and next month I'll be driving in Hungary. I've never been strandded because of swipe unacceptance, but I have had to try several gas stations in a row sometimes before finding one that would take my card. And "in a row" in rural Europe means in different towns many kilometers apart.)

But I've never heard of this option of buying a prepaid gas card locally (I don't recall anyone else mentioning it in this thread before, even though in the early days of this thread lots of the discussion was about the unmanned gas stations issue). Can you please explain a bit more where one finds these?

At any rate, there's also another solution, which is to keep plenty of gas in the car all the time, gassing up when you see a manned gas station whether you "need to" or not. Then you'll never be needing gas when only unmanned stations are around.

But that's the thing: There tend to be solutions when you're aware of the problem, aware of what types of places you might run into this problem, and have given some thought (or read suggestions) about how to work around the problem. Ie, for those people who've been reading this thread for a while, at least they're somewhat prepared. But there's a lot of travelers (including a lot of FTers) who will run into this issue before they've seen this thread, or who don't have the time (or whatever) to use the "workaround" solutions we've talking about here.

But beyond the absolute "no acceptance", keep in mind that there's a much more common occurence of simply inconvenience. A gas station where with a chip&pin card I could pay at the pump, but instead I have to go inside, wait in line, explain that I only have swipe card, get the pump enabled, go back out and pump, go back in and pay. And at some train stations I can't use the convenient kiosks but have to stand in long lines to use the few human tellers, sometimes to only find out that I stood in the wrong line. The "no acceptance at all" cases I know of I've read about in this thread (gas stations in France on the weekend, for example, but I haven't yet driven in France myself). I've been "lucky" so far, but I'd still love a chip&pin card so I could save time on my trip and "stop worrying" about one thing.

It seems most of the serious problems that Americans have involve unattended kiosks - train tickets, gas stations, etc. Will chip and signature help in those cases?

Tangentially related, but does anyone still accept the aborted PayPass system aside from mini-marts and the occasional vending machine? That system failed miserably, and I'm curious if there was any sort of legal liability shift with that program that was already ironed out. I suppose it would be similar to a chip and PIN system. Though to be fair, I never really had any idea how that system worked.

My ancient Chase CO debit card still has the PAYPASS logo and shows CO as being a part of SkyTeam.