TTT103

I recently was in Italy, and had issues with my Citi Prestige card (chip and signature) with automated gas stations and automated parking garages. The Citi card would not work despite numerous attempts. I ended up using my Barclays Aviator Red (chip and pin) without any issues.

I phoned Citi today, and there is absolutely no work-around.

OpenSky

There is none . The solution is use Barclays. Thank goodness that exists !
Or diners if BMO would take applications. Or one of those credit unions

Basically Citi , Amex , Chase don’t want your business while traveling and they don’t care to implement offline chip and pin capability for true international travelers / or cards with the option of chip and pin priority

Basically last month when I was in Germany for a whole month I must’ve charged about €3000 worth of stuff. it all went to Barclays. Much of it was related to renting cars and filling up at gas stations etc.

tmiw

The easily accessible solution for most people is to use a mobile wallet. Contactless acceptance in Europe is a lot more common than in the US and is increasingly being used by the locals instead of chip.

Or maybe get a contactless card but US banks outside of AmEx and a few others are also loathe to issue those for whatever reason. And you'll still have to insert for larger amounts with those, unlike Apple Pay et al.

(On that note, Diners Club's contactless will supposedly work on TfL based on what I've read off of mine. I may give that a shot when I'm in the UK to confirm.)

OpenSky

Actually a good alternative is Apple Pay, though Apple Pay US doesn't always work with Apple Pay international. ( it goes berserk if not in US dollars).
I haven't tried extensively, that may have changed.

tmiw

That's what I mean by "mobile wallet" above, as well as Samsung and Google's offerings. AFAIK, there shouldn't be any problems using any of them overseas.

OpenSky

Well AAPL pay just got launched in the UAE. Well see if this saves me from having to give the speech about wanting to in local currency and not have to go though DCC

kyanar

It works fine. I have a Citi US debit card linked to my Apple wallet and it happily processes AUD transactions here, though I do it very infrequently because of the 3% fee. It does display weird though, as the transaction listing in the Wallet app shows the AUD amount not the debited USD amount.

OpenSky

This is actually a great way to avoid DCC

tmiw

I remember reading posts over in the DCC thread about how contactless doesn't actually avoid DCC in some cases. YMMV, as always.

puddinhead

Get a Target VISA. It is chip and PIN with no FOREX and no annual fee. Target went with a PIN after their big hacking problem. And unlike Diners it was easy to set up a PIN I wanted.

tmiw

Target switched to MC, IIRC. Also, from what I remember you can't directly apply for it; you have to apply for the private label credit card and hope that they eventually switch out your card (though this could have changed recently).

A possibly easier/quicker route to go would be to get yourself a Redbird. But then you may have acceptance issues considering it's AmEx.

sdsearch

That implies that the Target card is "online" PIN only.

It is because Diners also supports "offline" PIN that it requires extra steps to change the PIN, since an "offline" PIN can only be changed when the chip on the card is in physical contact with something that can update it.

An "online" PIN is verified by contacting the bank, so only the bank needs to have the PIN updated. An "offline" PIN is verified at the terminal, even if there is no internet connection, and thus it requires the card itself to have the PIN updated.

And having both "online" and "offline" PIN gives you the most compatibility possible with a card issue in the USA. There are a handful of unattended kiosks in Europe that only accept "offline, not "online", PINs.

Such just having some PIN support on a card is not as good as having the two types of PIN support that Diners Club has (and that some Barclay cards have).

tmiw

"Offline" is verified by the terminal/card, actually, while "online" is verified by the bank. Online PIN isn't too commonly supported outside the US, though, so it's not nearly as important for compatibility as offline PIN.

Also, I can't speak for Target's other cards but the Redbird only has offline PIN. Fortunately the PIN change instructions from what I remember specifically state that the old PIN may need to be entered one last time.

EasternTraveler

why did you post this here?

mia

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