DSmith75

Will I be very hindered if all I have is standard US swipe cards?

GUWonder

I get by without it.

Depends on where you want to use your card, but it won't be a problem at hotels and hasn't been a problem for me with taxis, the manned transport service sellers, or clothing retailers/department stores (but need ID often). Some restaurants and grocery stores can be a problem.

Between ATM cash withdrawals and non-chip credit cards with passport to present, I have had no serious problems.

chrisljo

Make sure you have a Visa or MasterCard if you're planning to do a lot of non-travel related spending.

Amex is not widely accepted outside hotels and restaurants in the Nordics.

pseudoswede

At most establishments, when it's time to pay, just say "I don't have a code". The biggest drawback is that many employees do not know how you manually process a credit card such that it produces a signature slip.

klew97

I called my CC company before I left and they mailed me a PIN code to use with my swipe card. Everywhere I went in Stockholm, swipe+PIN worked the same as chip+PIN.

gnaget

My concern with a US card is that it makes the transaction into a "cash transfer" with X% fees and interest charged. I called Capital One once and they appear to have confirmed my fear.

Most Swedish machines have a button "ej kod". (No pin code.)

Bigzamboni

I'm guessing this is when using a PIN? Definitely never had this problem when signing.

Yeah, not being familiar with how it works is the only "problem" I've had, especially when I was in places not accustomed to tourists. More than once I've had some confused girl call a manager or something to ask if it was ok to use a driver's license or Passport number since I had no Swedish ID to put down.

klew97

I did this with my Capital One card and nothing like that happened. If you use the credit card at an ATM or as a debit card purchase, then it will be treated as a cash advance/transfer, and be subject to those fees.

pseudoswede

When you swipe and press "Ej Kod", it notifies the salesperson that they need to manually process the transaction with a signature slip. As I stated, most of the time, all I get in return is a confused/panicked look.

gnaget

And then they are supposed to check your ID. The panic typically relates to the fact that I do not produce a Swedish ID with a personnummer.

The easiest time was once when I gave the clerk a US driver's license. She looked on the back and saw a bar code scanned it, beep, and that was it.....

ksandness

I went to Scandinavia with a Capital One card, and I was asking for swipe-and-sign processing all through Norway. Then in Copenhagen, a train station employee urged me to try it with the PIN code. It worked, so I used that method for the rest of the trip.

TRRed

I can't speak for Stockholm, but for Copenhagen last summer, two restaurants and two hotels were the only places which accepted my magnetic strip card. Other places (7-11 types, McD's, gift shops) would only accept pin & chip cards.

BTW, we have gotten some pin and chip cards for our US employees to use when travelling outside the US, but we are having problems finding merchants in the area (Colorado) which will accept the P&C cards so that we can initialize them. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

TRRed

jth

Automated machines in Sweden are your biggest problems, and they are plentiful now (like the metro fare payment machines, train ticket machines, gas stations etc) since they wont accept anything but chip cards. At least this is the case for domestic swedish issued cards.
As for stores etc, as earlier posters said, they SHOULD accept swipe & sign as a backup, the major obstacles here are the clerks that are not aware of this and will panic if you dont have a chip&pin card.

gnaget

I was in Denmark a few days ago. I usually use cash there because I have easy access to it and return frequently.

Anyway, it was after 10 pm and I tried two machines at CPH to buy a klippekort (RIP June 2013, btw) for the train and I couldn't feed relatively crisp bank notes into them. So I had to use a foreign credit card with mag stripe and PIN. I actually didn't do it until I got to my destination metro station for travel next day. There I realized that the machine doesn't take bank notes. Thankfully mag stripe CC and pin works there.

p.s. The fact that places like McD, 7-11 and supermarkets take foreign CCs is an innovation. Until recently (could be several years) such "low end" stores would only take Dankort.

p.p.s. They now have a smart card for train travel. It's free if it is personalized and registered but costs DKK 80 if it is anonymous. (I guess you have to pay for the privilege of not having the government track your travel.) There are machines that dispense them on the metro platforms but the two machines that I tried said they were temporarily unable to dispense a card.

gnaget

For metro in Stockholm the SMS payment was great. I have a Swedish SIM so in the old days it would be deducted from your pay as you go account. So a tourist code also use this if they obtained a Swedish pay-as-you-go SIM.

Now they changed the system and the payment is via your phone but it has to be registered and linked to a CC. I registered my Swedish phone with a US CC. No problem. I wonder if you can register a foreign phone number?

It's also too bad because with the recently changed Telia billing if you load 300 SEK on a Telia pay as you go SIM then you get one months free mobile data. So I could have then used this money for train travel.