No. Those cards are notorious rip-offs. All you need is an ATM debit card tied to your checking account and a credit card for big purchases.

You will be paying $1.52/E compared to today's ATM rate of about $1.44/E

Why not bring your ATM card and use that?

At the mid-point rate you would be paying $1397. Just type 985 euros in Google search to find out what that moment's mid-point rate is.

Duetsinger, at today's rate €962 = $1,372.50. Why pay $125+ more>???

The ATM card is THE way to go --- as long as your bank is not one of the Mr. Greedykins. the Major banks all are. Many of them not only charge a flat fee for every transaction but ALSO charge a % of the amount you get out. For example, my local bank Wells Fargo, charges $5 plus 3 percent. THus to get $300 worth of Euros would cost me $14. Highway robbery.

If you live in an area served by TD bank, it's an excellent answer. I have a checking account there just for my travel to Greece every year. It charges NO percentage... and NO transaction fee for up to TEN transactions per month. You can get the daily limit/transaction limit raised from $500 to $750 or even more ... thus you would not use 10 transactions per month for normal expenses. (For major purchases such as jewelry or art, you would want to use a credit card anyway, in case of a dispute).

If you have no TD bank in your area, 2 other easy solutions are:
(1) a Credit union -- also no transaction fee or % fee normally. Find out what the per-transaction limit may be, and get yours raised for the trip. Also, many states have credit unions the public can join, don't have to work for a certain company or belong to a certain work group or union
(2) An Online bank -- such as Capital One. This is for their BANK account, NOT a credit card.

PS on ATM Cards --
(1) be sure to get the bank(s) to enter 2 things in their computer record -- the raised $ limit per day and info that you will withdraw funds from Europe... otherwise when you try to get funds in Italy they may think your card was stolen & freeze the account
(2) If there are 2 of you, each should have an ATM card
(3) Even if your home account is a MR. Greedykins, carry that ATM card too, as a back-up.

ABOUT CREDIT CARDS --
Make sure you know what your card fees are for usage overseas. Some "premium" cards do not exact a fee, but "ordinary" plebian cards typically charge 3% for overseas use, Can you believe it?!? Thus on $300 hotel bill, you pay $9 just to use the card. But I get "reward points" you may cry out. Yes... but typically at a 1% payback rate. Still a 2% charge.

Sorry I misread €985 for €962, without my glasses. €985 = $1401. $99 charge.

Good thread. 2 quick questions:

(1) My chosen hotel in rural alpine village suggests it takes American Express, Visa, or Euro/Mastercard. I have a Mastercard. With standard magnetic strip. Issued by American bank. Is this OK?

(2) Is Euro/Mastercard an RFID technology that is fairly new? My US Bank said they would begin rolling out RFID Mastercards at the end of July. (Too late for my trip).
Is the new technology we're seeing reference to when we see "Euro/Mastercard"?

CommodoreWhat the OP was talking about wans't a "EuroMastercard" . . . It was a pre-paid mastercard denominated in € for some reason. Nothing at all to do w/ the technology differences between US and European credit cards.

If your hotel takes Amex/Visa/mastercard you will be fine.

OK, just back from lengthy trip to Iceland, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland.

Here's the scoop. America has been BEHIND the Europeans in converting to a credit card that has a chip, not a magnetic strip, in it. I was successful in using my magnetic strip card at 90% of the spots I was in, but had to give instructions many times to vendors to (1) run the card down the side of their machine reader, not jam into the chip-reading bottom; and (2) look for the paper print-out so that I might sign the chit. So, it did work in most restaurants, bars, hotels. The old MAG STRIP DID NOT WORK in some automated machines, such as at some gas stations, and maddeningly some parking lot exit booths. This is really, really stressful when a barrier prevents your car from going anywhere, there is no person around to help and a machine refuses to take cash or your credit card. Ouch!

The European credit card, with the chip embedded, and no mag strip requires a PIN code. Pretty simple, no signatures required. Looking forward to receiving one in near future from my US bank.

Don't go stand by the mailbox, Commodore, because the US banks say they have no plans to convert to chip and pin.

I am not technically savvy but can see some possible problems with mobile chip readers and fraud. I'm not sure chip and pin are an improvement over my old magnetic strip cards.

And many places don't require a signature any more on purchases with the old cards.

The chip may not be great, but if we had them we could buy tickets out of machines in some stations (Amsterdam Centraal comes to mind) when our "outdated" US cards simply won't work.

Commodore - so did someone finally come out (in the parking lot or gas station) and take your money/card? We are heading to France and I bought a Travelex card with 150 Euro on it for just the sort of problem you encountered. But I wasn't planning on using it much as I don't want to reload it and pay the exchange markup for even more Euros. So just wondered how you finally resolved any issues.

I presume that the CHIP and PIN would be generally available to the U.S. users when some banks mention in their annual report how "innovative...ahem, many years behind rest of the world..." product helped improve their income positions. Only then the other banks, like lemmings, will rush to offer them as premium products as if they are at the forefront of meeting market demands...LOL.

In just one year, it seems that the banks finally acknowledge the issue. Perhaps many more customers are complaining about lack of CHIP and PIN features. Just a year ago, when I asked my local banks about the CHIP and PIN card plans, they thought I was talking to them in foreign languages. This year, all of my banks knew what the CHIP and PINs were, but all said they are "testing" the product concept. What??? How many years had they been in use in rest of the world?

The European credit card ... requires a PIN code.

My impression from standing in line behind persons who use them, that is also true of the debit card. I recently purchased an item with my credit card at Trader Joe's and did not have to sign anything.

Obviously it would be more convenient for travelers if we had the chip in our cards, but what percentage of the card carrying American public do we represent?

Regarding the percentage of card carrying American public, I didn't think the banks ever cared about how many people got impacted. They cared mostly (or only...) about the income potentials from whatever the population than can do business with. From this point, the observation that the top 20% of earner in the U.S. accounted for 60% of the spending www.nytimes.com/2011/08/04/business/sales-of-luxury-goods-are-recovering-strongly.html which is probably more likely to be traveling overseas than the other 80% of the population, should favor banks tapping into the CHIP and PIN capable market even it benefits only a small part of the card carrying population.

There are instances I would pay premium to use an EMV card. If I am at an SNCF station with train leaving in 10min, and the line at the ticket window is 15min long, I would be willing to pay $5 or so to buy tickets using a vending machine and hop on the train instead of having to wait 2hrs for the next one.

There is a sign that the VISA is nudging U.S. merchants to accept EMV and NFC technologies, www.networkworld.com/news/2011/080911-visa-chip.html. But the time frame is still end of 2012...

As a former employee of a small business I wonder about the cost of changeover of reader machines. Or are we talking about having both technologies available to the card-carrying public and the small merchant would still be able to use only magnetic stripe cards?

You probably would be expected to absorb the cost, although the changeover would be over a period of time. This summer I came across the new machines in Europe which no longer accept the stripe. But the chip has been in use for quite a while.

I still do not see the chip as particularly useful in the States since signatures are not always required and a switch to a pin number embedded in the stripe should be quite easy.

ATLTRAVLR - Always rely on the kindness of strangers. Bailed out by very nice passerby, who used took my cash, and used their cards. But not until I had worked up a wonderful sweat, and left my family standing on a curb a mile away with their bags, also worrying.

I understand that switchover costs could be enormous. And that world travelers are a small percentage. But honestly, do bank executives never travel? You'd think the bigger US banks could offer a card to traveling clients who request it.

Mag strips in 2011 feel like showing up at a meeting with a 5.25" floppy disk tailor made for the 1980s era PC.

As I said, 90% of my transactions worked fine. It is that panic attack situation at an automated ticket taker that makes it all a little scary.

The chip may not be great, but if we had them we could buy tickets out of machines in some stations (Amsterdam Centraal comes to mind) when our "outdated" US cards simply won't work.

I'm pretty sure that the ticket machines in Amsterdam do not take credit cards of any kind, only the local Dutch debit cards. Having a chip-and-PIN credit card from the US would likely do you little good.

There is a lot of confusion on this topic between issues with incompatible networks vs incompatible card technologies.

travelgourmet, well I learned something new today. I was told over and over again that the reason my US credit card wouldn´t work in an Amsterdam ticket machine was that it was not a chip and pin card.

You know, looking at the Dutch train website, it looks like they may also take Maestro cards. This is basically a multinational debit card system run by Mastercard. A credit card still wouldn't work, but it looks like the system is more open than I gave it credit for.

Considering that Canada (a similar market as US) has chip-pin CCs, I would think that the US could follow our lead and do a gradual introduction of them. During transition, keep signature option, but make new readers Chip capable.

In March I was at a small 10 room resort in a village of mud roads, one store, chickens running around, up island in Zanzibar Africa. Their machine was CHIP.

I would think that the US could follow our lead and do a gradual introduction of them.

There are over 11 million credit card terminals in the US. It will take a while to replace them all.

I would also note that the US retailers may simply skip over chip-and-PIN and move directly to contactless payment technologies.