Using US Credit Cards in Europe without a code
 

I read the other day (WSJ I think) where it's becoming more and more difficult to use a standard US-issue credit card in Europe because many of the merchants are now requiring your card to be the "chip & PIN" type where you have to put in a PIN code (Better security I guess). The catch is if you're in the US, you can't get a credit card with a PIN code. An example given in the article was where a person tried to buy railway tickets with a standard US credit card and was told by the cashier "No PIN, no ticket!"

My question to the community here: What's a US-based traveler to do, short of using their debit cards (which I prefer not to do)? Are there workarounds so that one can secure a PIN based credit card?

Thanks!

I've traveled to Europe a lot in the last few years, and after hundreds of transactions the only time I ever had this problem was at a museum in Frankfurt. US Visa and MC credit cards are accepted without any problem almost everywhere in Europe.

This has been discussed here before.

The summary:
Merchants are required to accept non chip/pin cards, however, there are some automated machines that have problems. Only some European countries have widespread chip/pin authentication. If you encounter a problem at a merchant, ask the merchant to press "no pin" or "signature" or let the machine time out (sometimes that triggers the signature method). Visa USA has the infrastructure in place to allow chip/pin cards, but there aren't currently any issuers (at least there weren't last time I talked to Visa corporate).

Here is Visa's information page:
http://usa.visa.com/personal/using_v...avel_tips.html

I second redburgundy. It's very seldom that you might run in Europe in a problem with a US credit card. I could not buy a train ticket at a CDG kiosk for SNCF and/or the RATP (Paris Metro/RER).

Next, I have some credit cards with a PIN.

Anyway, this Chip & PIN issue might become a problem in the future ... now it's not.

I would go further than that. It will probably never be a problem.

The merchant is required to validate with chip if the card has a chip - the machine will prompt to use chip and pin if you try to swipe a card that has the chip. But merchant can override this if they wish. In that scenarion merchant bears the cost of fraud if it happens. Eg in England Waitrose was late out with the machines (they had internal techncal problems) and for a couple weeks, they voluntarily accepted chip cards and thus took that risk so that they would not inconvenience their customers.

If the card doesnt have a chip, the readers always have a magnetic reader as backup. And in that case the card companies do not penalise them.

Even here in Norway for example, there are banks such as Scandiabank that continue to issue cards with no chip, if the account holder wants that.

And why not? You see, it will take decades before chip and pin could be 100% standardised across technically lagging regions such as Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, South America and......err....USA. yet the idea of a visa or mastercard is that you can go anywhere worldwide and it is accepted. So merchants in Europe will still be accepting this card even if in a few years it is 100% in use in Europe. And that is not close

So there is no reason to worry. Both will coexist for a very long time. I

Thanks all for the quick responses. I suspected it wasn't as big a deal as the article made out (gee, journalists exaggerating!) but I appreciate hearing it from the experts here.

Probably the bigger problem in some countries (like Germany) is that credit card acceptance overall is fairly low (though in the tourist industry it is, as expected, nearly 100%).

I was unable to use our credit card in Denmark this summer. I wish this post was made before we travelled. What we ended up doing was transferring money from credit account (cash advance) to our checking account with enough money to cover our trip. Then we used the debit card to buy whatever we needed. None of the stores or banks we tried told us we could still use the Visa card without the PIN number.

:td:
I'm not that surprised. I had problems in Sweden last summer and initially got denied a few times before I became armed with the information on proper procedures. I still had a handful of problems with automated machines (though Amex often worked in those cases), but knowledge really is power.

Those stores were violating their VISA merchant agreement. Likely this was down to igtnorance/poor training.

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Lacking any real focus on "Travel Technology" this thread is now starting a new life in the TravelBuzz! forum. Enjoy.
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And FWIW, at the train stations where Chip+PIN is required at the train ticket machines the agents at the windows are generally able to sell you a ticket with a US-issued card, though possibly with a small surcharge for an agent transaction.

True, unless they're closed or unstaffed.
Visa is apparently not happy that not all of the machines are able to recognize and process non-chip/pin cards without PIN.

I've spent a ton of time in Europe the last few years and Denmark was the only place I had a problem. In reality, it was only one clerk at a store who was too lazy to press no pin. Of 9 trips to Denmark in the last 2 years that was the ONLY issue.

A different problem is for Europeans using a European credit card in the US where the store needs the ZIP-Code for completing the transaction. I'm not talking about the case where store just asks for the ZIP for statistical reasons. There are stores where they need the ZIP code of the address your credit card is registered or the transaction doesn't go through.

This happened to me with a US issued card, but a Dubai billing address. Dubai has no zip codes, and esp petrol stations and big stores (Office Depot, Walmart etc) ask for a zip to process a credit card. Sometimes 00000 works (my Czech bank had to have a post code for Dubai too so I tend to use 00000 for my post code).