I recently got the Surpass card and in the mail today received something I've never gotten with any other credit card - they issued me a PIN so I can use the card for cash advances at ATM's.

We have no interest in this, we have no interest in a debit card, and as I said, have never had this happen before.

Does this put me at risk for debit card liability (as opposed to credit card)?

No, all my Citi AA cards send me a pin even before I even get the card. Some other banks do as well. It is only if you want to use the card in an ATM machine, as you said. Has nothing to do with a debit card and if you do use it at an atm, you will be paying the interest rate immediately on that withdrawal. Do what I do....shred it and forget it.

Will do.

With some banks, mostly with MasterCard credit cards, that PIN is not just for ATM machines (which I agree are not good to use with credit cards except maybe in a real emergency). They are also the PIN for EMV purchases in some countries in Europe (where some automated kiosks require a PIN for you to make a purchase).

In those cases, if you are going to be traveling to Europe and possibly using that card at automated kiosks, I would not recommend shredding it, but instead either memorizing it or changing it to a PIN you can remember (but you need the original PIN that they issued to change the PIN to a new one). If you're worried about using the card at an ATM (or somewhere else where it's treated as a cash advance rather than a purchase), request that they lower the cash advance credit limit to $0 (or the lowest they allow, at least).

Having said that, Amex (USA) does not support chip + PIN on any of their cards that's I've looked at with Cardpeek, so for Amex (Surpass) it is indeed shreddable.

Also, that card (H Surpass) does have FTF's so I would never use it out of the country anyway.

My letter that came with pin says it is only good for cash advances.

This article explains it pretty well.
http://www.creditcards.com/credit-ca...e-emv-1433.php

Here's the FT thread about it: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/credi...re-2017-a.html

No, that letter is Citi AA not Amex. I used my Citi AA card all over Europe last summer for 6 weeks and never got the pin to work. The only time it did was when I tried again and just hit enter without entering a pin. This includes a toll road in France, airport train in Copenhagen, tolls and parking in Sweden, and several more.

I actually called Citi once and asked them for a pin to work in Europe as a chip & pin and they said they didn't support it yet.

Correct, it would be the AA co-branded cards issued by Barclays which have a type of PIN support.

Thanks Mia...haven't picked up one of those....yet

To be fair, regardless of what Barclays says I've also never got my AA or Arrival+ cards to work with a pin in Europe.
(stopping the off-topic now)

To be really fair, you must regard what Barclays says, i.e. follow simple instructions.
Those cards worked with a PIN for those who did.

Thanks for assuming that I did not follow the instructions! ^^^

I've had the card about 3 years already.

In theory, I should be able to cancel the no-AF version, and apply for the Surpass within few days, correct? Curiously when I just logged into my no-AF version account, 100k upgrade to Surpass offer no longer shows up. It was there on the day I applied for the Surpass separately.

Thanks for continuing to stay off topic after promising to stop in a prior post about this.

There are many possible explanations for why you had the problem, but they're all off-topic in this thread.

My Barclay Aviator Red card worked PIN the only time I tried it in Norway, at a rural unmanned gas station late at night where no pin-less card I had would work. There was my only trip to Europe since getting that card, and it was the only situation on that trip in which my PIN-less cards didn't work. And i sort of "forced it", in that I didn't really need to get gas at that location, but I wanted to see what would happen if I tried.

On other trips to Europe before that, where I had only my Diners Club USA card with an EMV PIN, on each trip I ran into at most one place where PIN-less cards wouldn't work but the PIN card would. But I also ran into other situations where no foreign cards worked at all, or where kiosks were plain broken, too.

So PIN is not a panacea. In some places it helps get you out of a fix, in many places it makes no difference, and in some places the number of kiosks that don't take foreign cards of any sort way outnumbers the number of kiosks which take foreign cards but demand a PIN card.

However, to get back on topic, you can't get EMV PIN with a Hilton card, since Citi's Hilton cards are Visa cards (and USA-based Visa cards don't support PIN as a rule), and Amex USA doesn't tend to support PIN either.

Yes, I know I know. But that reply...
I actually never had any problems using the Barclays cards whatsoever. I simply never had to input the PIN, either in "regular" POSs or in automated ones.