greglvnv

I have had this card declined each time the merchant terminal tries to bypass the PIN requirement, resulting in a declined transaction. Is that consistent with your experiences?

mia

What is the circumstance in which a merchant would try to bypass the PIN?

sdsearch

And which exact card are you talking about? That's not clear, because you list your location as both US and Brazil, so we can't tell where you card was issued.

greglvnv

The card is a US-issued MasterCard DC. I am referring to restaurants that do not have portable or front facing terminals.

sdsearch

I think most other people have simply given up on using the US-issued MC DC at such restaurants, and just use another card in those cases instead. I know at least one or two other people have mentioned that in the past in other threads.

greglvnv

Today I went back to the same restaurant and made them let me enter a PIN. I can’t believe a merchant would rather decline a transaction instead of investing in portable terminals or educating the staff.

tmiw

In fairness, nearly every US issued credit card available to regular customers is chip and signature--not chip and PIN--and nearly every debit card can have PIN bypassed. Why pay for something that almost no one will actually need, especially when merchant processors are seemingly fine with disabling PIN functionality on terminals if need be? (Not to mention that Americans supposedly hate pay at the table the way Europe does it, so we'd either have to adopt the pay at the front model more widely or have tablets at each table like Chili's/Red Robin/etc. if PIN became mandatory.)

I've definitely mentioned this issue elsewhere on FT in the past. I wouldn't say I've given up altogether, but that card's used far less often than my other cards in those situations.

That said, merchant processors seem to be more aware of the issue now and will disable PIN functionality for restaurant clients on request and/or by default. Of course, merchants need to know to ask for this, and if it almost never comes up in the first place...

(BTW I've read that the standard US practice of tip adjust isn't actually allowed on MC if PIN's used. It'd be interesting to see if that's actually the case in practice but I also don't really want to potentially stiff the server either.)

sdsearch

Whether a card supports PIN or not is not the issue. The issue is PIN priority. Diners Club USA MC has PIN priority, but I'm not sure if any other "US-issued" card does, even though there are cards like the Barclaycard AA Aviator series which have both "offline" and "online" PIN, but just at lower priorities than signature.

But, then, the question is, is Diners Club US MC really "US-issued"? It's issued by BMO, Bank of Montreal. Last I checked, Montreal is in Canada, not the US. Now, yes, they have a US division or whatever, but the bank itself is based in Canada, and so that may be why they are looking from a Canadian perspective rather than a US perspective on how to configure chip priority on cards they issue to US customers.

Since I have a regular AF Diners card, I feel no incentive to use it (over other cards) at restaurants in the US. (And since I have the Professional card with its pesky Forex fees, I don't have much of an incentive to even use it for restaurants overseas, unless they don't like any of my other cards.)

tmiw

I don't define cards like what Barclays issues as "chip and PIN" despite the marketing in the US by issuers. Sure, they do have PIN capability, but they'll never ask for it for anything other than unattended terminals (and even then, it's fairly likely depending on the issuer that only the ones that aren't compliant with Visa/MC rules regarding CVM list processing will ask).

As for other PIN-preferring cards, this link may be helpful. If you play around with the search settings, you'll find that only a few issuers (mainly credit unions) even bother issuing such cards. The most common cards in the US are ones without PIN functionality at all, followed by those configured to do PIN as a last resort.

Also, I'm not sure being Canadian or US comes into play here. Diners Club's US cards could very easily have become chip and signature cards without contactless capability despite BMO's Canadian operations, but haven't (yet, anyway; I half-expect at least contactless to go away at some point). That to me seems to imply that their client base actually wants PIN and contactless capability, or is at least not against either.

BTW, for OP and others who might want a PIN preferring card that won't cause issues in the US, I can confirm that UNFCU's cards allow bypass. Redbird, on the other hand, does not.

mia

BMO bought the Diners franchise from Citi for the corporate accounts. The consumer/professional accounts were a bonus (now a burden). No reason they should degrade the consumer cards to Chip & Signature if they are just as happy to have the account closed.

tmiw

I thought the consumer accounts came about after that purchase?

mia

Citi issued cards marked Professional to both individual and small business applicants. After a long delay BMO created new cards which they called Consumer, withdrew them, and offer nothing since for individuals or small businesses.

All of BMO's public statements at the time of the acquisition referred to the corporate accounts.

Combining their public statements with the failed offerings, I infer that they originally saw the consumer business as a bonus, but now see it as a burden.

tmiw

I see it more as they overextended themselves with the Consumer card offering (unlimited 3x on extremely MSable categories isn't sustainable). They're probably hesitant to try again any time soon, even with a more reasonable rewards structure. Besides, if the consumer cards were truly a burden, they'd just get rid of them altogether as you mentioned.

Anyway, going back to OP's original problem, I feel like this could have been avoided had networks flat out said that the official standard in the US would be chip and signature instead of de facto letting it become such. It could then be mandated to be disabled on terminals (at least at merchants that don't support debit), avoiding the issue entirely. Then again, that's just one of a whole lot of things done poorly with the transition, IMO.

sdsearch

To put in historical perspective:

It seems to me that any problems with PIN preferring current Diners Club MC USA "not working" at some restaurants are mild compared to the problems we (who have had the DC USA long before it became an MC) had with being restricted to the Diners Club network. Keep in mind that it had nothing to do with the Discover network back then, and had way more limited acceptance at restaurants and other merchants than anything I can think of today in the US except perhaps Bitcoin. You had to look for restaurants with a DC logo on the door, and if they didn't have it (but had logos for other networks), chances are they didn't accept it.

And acceptance in many other categories was fleeting. I remember having to use Dillard's as a department store (not Sears, not Macys, not JCPenneys, etc) because it was about the only department store near me that accepted DC!

Plus I run into restaurants that don't accept Amex still these days in big cities in the US. Only a fraction, but annoying when I'm trying to earn a signup bonus on an Amex card and want to use SKyMiles Dining restaurants and it turns out one of my favorites in that program in a given area doesn't give accept Amex or doesn't give dining program miles for Amex.

So that's why I'm not surprised that my DC might not work everywhere, or that a given card may not work at every restaurant.

tmiw

I feel like it's less excusable because it's a MC. That's not really the fault of BMO/Diners Club though--it's more the fault of MC itself for not enforcing its current rules and/or not imposing new rules that would allow issuers to have PIN-preferring cards without acceptance issues.