Myer

Several years ago I applied for and eventually received an Andrews Federal Credit Union Globetrek card.

It wasn't a pure Chip & Pin card as it worked fine in places that use a swipe card. In fact, if a vendor accepted swipe cards it defaulted to being a swipe card and not a PIN card.

In France I had no problem using it. Train station ticket vending machines worked fine.

I did however have trouble using it in Italy. I ended up using my regular swipe card.

Since I'm planning a trip to Italy and Portugal I may want to switch to a newer card that others have found to work well.

Any help here?

xyz123

Stuff happens that may keep a particular card from working 100% of the time outside the concept of chip and pin.

In the business, the Andrews card is considered a signature preferred card with pin capabilities. It should work everywhere today so there's no need to replace it. It's next to impossible in the USA to get a pin preferred card. Signature preferred cards with pin capabilities should be fine everywhere unless something unforeseen happens.

hetismij2

You will not be able to use a swipe card in most places in the Netherlands There simply isn't the facility to swipe cards here any more. Again a four figure PIN is required in most situations here.

Heimdall

You can insert your chip card into the chip and pin slot, and instead of asking for a pin, the terminal will print out a receipt for your signature. If you have a late model iPhone, you may be able to set the card up for Apple Pay, then can use the phone for contactless payments.

Andrew

I had an Andrews FCU Visa chip and PIN credit card for a few years and used it all over Europe though perhaps not in Italy. I used the PIN feature at machines several times; it never failed me. But my regular bank chip and signature Visa card also worked almost everywhere too - and I used that most of the time on my last trip to Europe. Only one place - the ticket machine to buy train tickets in the Netherlands - would not accept my non-PIN Visa card with a chip.

I have another chip and PIN credit card now so dumped the Andrews card, but not because it didn't work. (I stopped swiping cards in Europe a while ago - just insert the chip card into the slot like the Europeans do.) Just had too many cards, didn't need the Andrews card anymore. I would have to sign slips at any transaction where a human was involved, but that was no big issue; I mostly wanted the chip and PIN for machines, and the card worked great there. (But again - didn't actually use that card in Italy, as I recall.)

xyz123

To try to simplify this a bit. The USA is converting to use the emv chip in all credit cards. All new cards have the chip. If you have an older card lacking the chip, you should call your bank to get a chip card. While you can probably still use swipe cards in most places, there are some countries like the Netherlands as pointed out above where they may not work.

Now our banks here have decided, probably for financial reasons, to make almost all the chip card signature preferred. That means in almost every case if you use the card at a pos terminal with a human present, what will happen is the message signature required will flash, a slip will be printed, the clerk will probably mutter under his or her breath dumb American as he or she frantically searches for a pen. After you sign, he or she may actually compare the signature on the slip with the signature on the card (not that anything will be done if they don't match), something that is unheard of in the USA where as a matter of fact they don't bother with signatures for small purchases and you'll be on your way.

The situation is somewhat murkier with kiosks where human interaction is not present. Visa and mc have promulgated rules that all valid cards must be honored, pin or not. But some merchants blatantly ignore these rules and mc and visa do little to enforce them. So there might be some cases where you try to use your signature preferred card and it will not work. Not all that many but some. Now many of the signature preferred cards, such as the Andrews cards, do have pin capabilities and when signatures fail the kiosk will ask for a pin and then process the transaction. However, unfortunately, many of the US banks especially the larger ones such as Chase, Citi, Capital One make no provisions for pins at all. Their solution in their literature? Bring some cash. Wonderful.

There are very few financial institutions in the USA that issue pin preferred cards, all of which are small out of the way fcu's.

Quite frankly, you should hot travel with only one credit card. Stuff happens. I myself bring 4 cards on a trip to protect myself. While your primary card need not have pin capabilities, at least one should. Just in case.

Christina

<<You will not be able to use a swipe card in most places in the Netherlands There simply isn't the facility to swipe cards here any more. >>

This is simply astonishing to me. So the Netherlands just doesn't care about all the tourism dollars they will lose if people can't use their credit cards there? I can't believe this is only Americans either (who won't have a chip card that works in the Netherlands), but even so, that just seems hard to believe, that an American will be unable to charge anything in the Netherlands anywhere (or most of them, anyway). So what do all the American tourists do, I'm sure some are still going? Not even hotels will take their cards? Luckily I don't plan a trip there in the near future to worry about this, but I'm just really surprised.

Of course I presume people can still use ATM cards there and could withdraw tons of cash, as those have always used PINs.

I don't think there is any card company in the US that hasn't issued a chip card by now, though. Even my Discover, which was really late, issued one quite a while ago.

menachem

Your contribution to the discussion is self contradictory.

I'm simply amazed the Americans would willingly choose to use a swipe card, with all the opportunities for credit card fraud, yet be in a state of panic over "scams" in Paris, for instance.

xyz123

Menachem...a lot of people don't know any better. The use of swipe cards in the USA is still quite substantial and as the vast majority of Americans have not crossed either ocean or spent much time in Canada or Mexico, they really don't know any better. The banks themselves have not gone out of their way to replace the swipe cards with chip cards; it's coming but still not there yet. Finally, credit card fraud is not and should not be a big problem as every card in America has zero liability for fraud. It can be inconvenient if your account gets hacked but is easily resolvable but that is one of the reasons it is strongly suggested one should not travel with only one credit card just in case.

thursdaysd

@Christina - why do you think American tourism is important to the Dutch? According to wikipedia tourism is a small part of the overall economy, and American tourists are far outnumbered by European ones.

Not only may a swipe card not work, you may be charged an additional fee for using a foreign card. Take cash.

hetismij2

Christina, you can still pay with cash in most (but not all) places and you can still use ATMs.
Why would the Netherlands maintain a risky system such as swipe cards for what is a tiny amount of transactions in reality. The majority of tourists to the Netherlands are from other EU countries, who also have chip and pin cards.
We have a perfectly good electronic baking system, haven't had cheques for a couple of decades now, and do a huge number of payments using a bank card. Dutch do not use credit cards for every day payments, and do not generally build up huge credit card debts.
That you live in a backward country which accepts the risks of fraud (so such so that our bank card do not work in the US unless we inform our bank first), either from a swipe cards or a signature card is your problem, not ours.

BigRuss

<<I'm simply amazed the Americans would willingly choose to use a swipe card, with all the opportunities for credit card fraud, yet be in a state of panic over "scams" in Paris, for instance.>>

The fraud harm to the users for US cards is financially negligible. IDK what the limits are for consumer loss in the EU, UK, constituent countries, but this problem was not significant in the US and later became non-existent. The Central and Eastern European blind-eye attitude toward credit card theft and lack of safeguards at ATMs drove the chip "need" in Europe a decade and more ago. In addition, it was Europe's backwardness in continuing to use impression-based validation that enabled copying of cards by fraudulent actors.

The US no longer issues swipe-only cards. The processing companies also required replacing all swipe-only cards with chip cards.

The notion that EMV cards are fraud-free is just ignorant. They can cut card-present transaction fraud to almost nil unless you give up your PIN to someone else, but card-not-present transactions are the more frequent fraud in the United States and that won't be prevented by a chip.

BigRuss

<< The processing companies also required replacing all swipe-only cards with chip cards.>>

Should say "effectively required" - the processors (MC/Visa/AMEX) have ruled that whoever is less EMV compliant at the point of sale bears the burden of fraud. That means no chip card, chip reader at vendor = issuer is liable. Chip card and chip reader = issuer liable. Chip card and swipe-only reader = vendor liable.

menachem

BigRuss: in any case: ordinary debit cards are the most widely used for transactions over here.

Christina

I can only presume that US companies do this for a reason, not because they are totally stupid and they don't think they lose enough through fraud to outweigh the other costs. I presume that's the reason.

hetismij2, so you are saying any American tourist going to the Netherlands has to get thousands of euros from an ATM to pay their hotel bill, for example? I'm just surprised, that's all, haven't heard that.

I don't know the fraud breakdowns but every single time there has been fraud on my credit cards over the years (at least 6 times), it was online fraud, and that's true for everyone I know, also.

xyz123

Christina...you nailed it. As far as card is present fraud is concerned, the difference between chip and pin as opposed to chip and signature only comes into play if the actual card is lost or stolen, at least for now. Although card hackers are hard at work, they still, it is believed, have been unable to clone the emv chip.

Pins in many respect can be a pain in the petuna. I am not questioning the pin is more secure in the case of a lost or stolen card but it presents other problems. If you have four or five different cards, you might have to memorize four or five different pins unless you set up a procedure to make them the same. Also there are people who have problems memorizing numbers. So what if your pin is 5345 and you think it is 5354? After the third attempt, your card is blocked and if this is your only card on a trip, you then have a real problem in getting the card resurrected as they will not, as they shouldn't, give you your pin over the phone so you will need a place to receive a new mailed pin even if, and it is unlikely, the bank is willing to send your new pin to an address other than your home address on record. It's far easier from a consumer view point not to have to worry about pins. You insert the card and you sign; nothing to memorize. And since the merchant is protected if he or she follows the procedures, why should it matter if a card is chip and pin or chip and signature? And as you noted, all this chip business does nothing about online card is not present fraud and the feeling is that will increase dramatically once the US merchants get off their rear ends and install the proper terminals to process emv compliant cards.

My only complaint about use of credit cards in Europe is the continued stupidity of making people sign for small purchases, say less than €50 or £50 or whatever. Most clerks are students who are not going to say anything anyway most likely even if the signature is obviously different from the one on the card. In the USA, with the full blessing of the credit card companies, signatures are hardly ever required for purchases under $50. You're in and out in a jiffy.

My other gripe is when I am asked for identification for credit card purchases. While mc and visa do not prohibit a merchant asking for ID, said merchant may not refuse to run the transaction for failure to show ID. I know there are people who think this is a wonderful thing and have no problem showing ID. Let me simply say this. Having one's credit card account is NOT identity theft. A few phone calls and the matter is resolved, you get a new card with a new number and life goes on. Identity theft which can start simply with some eagle eyed clerk memorizing your passport number and birth date is a horse of a different color. Just don't want to take the chance.

TravelinFeet

Just fyi. Capital One does have pins, the same one you would use for a cash advance.

As I noted in an earlier post, the other unnerving situation is being asked for a six digit pin! Which we have finally figured out is, for Cap One, the four number pin plus two trailing zeros.

I haven't tried my Bank of America cards in a six digit pin one yet tho. Has anyone?

TF

thursdaysd

@xyz123 - guess all those Europeans must be super-smart since they seem to have no trouble with PINs.

xyz123

thursdaysd...in a way, you're preaching to the choir. Had it been up to me if for no other reason than uniformity, I would have preferred chip and pin. I was presenting the rationale as given to me by execs at some of the US banks. Also, and it is something that has to be borne in mind, the US credit card industry is far larger than elsewhere (not better but larger). Americans tend to carry more cards than other nationalities. The point being made is that as part of the costs of installing chip and pin is to set up mechanisms for dealing with forgotten pins and changing pins. But I will also say this, and it is not meant as a put down of anybody, the banks in the USA have become much better at snooping out suspicious looking charges and more often than not, people become aware of their account being hacked when the banks calls to tell them long before they receive the next bill. It is what it is. If one never leaves the USA, it is totally meaningless as most of the merchants that have even installed the emv terminals do it with signatures not pins and most people don't know the difference.

xyz123

Travelinfeet...The Cap one pin is only for cash advance transactions. The use of pins for purchases is not one of their cvm's (card verification methods) on their chips. A Cap one card will never prompt you for a pin for a purchase whether it is at a pos terminal or at a kiosk.