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Norween,
I don't like what may be coming to the US travellers. The "travellers card" would probably be introduced because of the "popular demand" of the frequent travellers who demand "convenience" of using automatic machines abroad for a "nominal" annual fee and per usage fee. |
I assure you that if the eu mandates the use of pin and chip cards in the eu as long as the North American banks do not go in that direction, terminals will accept the old fashioned cards....visa and mastercard will not allow the business of North Americans coming to euroland to be denied the opportunity to use their card.
We had this debate about a year and a half ago when the UK went with pin and chip cards...other than a couple of near illiterate clerks in some convenience stores who keept putting my non chip card in their chip terminal and couldn't get through their thick skulls that it had to be swiped (and I finally had to get them to bring over a manager so I could buy my 2 for £1.29 diet cokes, who walks around with that kind of cash anyway)...I have had no difficulty, none as in none, using my old fashioned magnet stripe card everywhere in the UK I have been and I might use my card 5 or 6 times a day as you may or may not know my general rule is that if there are credit card decals on a store, then I use the credit card for every purchase no matter how small (well even I have my limits and I don't try to use a credit card for purchases under 1 quid). |
Do you know what the M and the V mean in "EMV standard" (E is for Europay)
V for Visa M for Mastercard ! |
It's a little different in Germany. Many merchands won't take your credit card, no matter if it's local on an international one. Just yesterday at the T-Mobile store (T-Punkt). Sure, you can get your bonus points booked on that credit card, just hand it to me... but we don't accept it for paying. Don't you have Maestro/EC??? The same goes for many businesses.
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...you mean logos our "Americanization" of Germany hasn't reached the credit card industry yet??? I mean I see more Mickey D's, Pizza Huts and now Subways in Germany than most any other country I have visited in the world (with the possible exception of Japan)...of course you haven't yet embraced baseball as the Japanese have but NFL Europe is very big in Germany from what I understand and I understand the NFL is bringing a regular season game to Germany in the near future (and once you've seen NFL football you'll understand why soccer hasn't made it in the USA)....but anyway I'm surprised the use of credit cards hasn't proliferated yet in Germany...but give it time! <g>
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Most credit card cost you extra money, EC/Maestro in included with every bank account. Have a Bank account, have an EC card... It'll be very hard to convince people they need a CC. ;-)
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It should be pointed out that most French people use Debit Cards, and that non-French chipped credit cards will not work with French fuel pumps (as many Brits on a day trip or holiday have found out).
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As a French resident with a French debit card, but still a Canadian credit card, I can attest that there are not many problems. Normally only when you have to deal with a machine - like an unstaffed gas station - will your credit be rejected.
All the hand held payment machines that we have ever come across even in small stores and restaurants have a slot for swiping your card as well as the space for inserting a card with chip. As several people have mentioned, bank machines will sometimes, for reasons unknown to us mortals, reject a card that we think they should accept. Normally a visit to a competitor should solve this problem. Our French friends, who tend to think that North America is always ahead of Europe in matters technical, didn't believe us when we told them in the early 90's that hand held card machines, which make paying in restaurants so easy, didnt exist where we came from. We find it hard to believe now that they still don't seem to. |
Carlux you wrote "All the hand held payment machines that we have ever come across even in small stores and restaurants have a slot for swiping your <u>card</u> as well as the space for inserting a card with chip." What kind of card? Surely not a credit card. |
hopscotch, yes, a credit card. I always remind the sales clerk or waiter that the card has to be swiped because it does not have a chip.
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Then Michael I don't think that fact is relevant to the issue of chip cards. If an establishment accepts A/M/V then the front door would be ablaze with the credit card icons. You wouldn't need a chip card so the American CCs are as good as gold. |
hopscotch, the establishment might have the credit card logos on the door, but they might assume that they are the European version with a chip.
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Here where I see the problem coming in...the modern terminals merchants have to buy when switching to chip and pin cards always have the facility to take the old fashioned magnetic strip cards...if a chip and pin card, the card is inserted and remains in the machine while the customers enters his or her pin....if a magnetic strip card, it is swiped through another portion of the terminal, it comes up on the screen that the customer is to sign the sales slip.
The problem comes in, as I noted, with the (and please let me put this delicately) lack of knowledge of the real world possessed by many of the clerks, some of who are 16 year old teenagers trying to pick up a few bucks (or quid or euro or swiss francs) with an after school or summer job...they are taught the bare minimum you know if somebody presents a credit card for payment insert the card here and get the pin and magnetic swipe cards if issued by a bank issuing a chip and pin card are not valid but international ones are...and if the store is off the beaten path which rarely sees tourists. well you can imagine the clerk putting the perfectly valid magnetic stripe international card in the chip portion of the terminal and getting no response telling the customer the card is no good. Had it happen a couple of times in London and had to get the manager over who knew what was going on (this is the same thing that happens with dcc when clerks are told how to handle a dcc transaction and told not to ask yada yada yada)... Actually I would hope the US banks would begin to enter the 21st century but we all know sometimes the USA likes to march to the beat of its own drum. |
Very interesting, xyz123. I've never seen a terminal here were you can swipe your card, doubt that they exist in Germany? The clerk always puts the card into the machine, no matter if it has a chip. The swiping occours the moment as he puts it in there. You can only enter the Pin when the card is in the machine. If you'd used a CC the register prints a receipt for you to sign. I think, the clerk has no influence in all of this?
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Hi
When I went to Paris in April I was also surprised to see that many place make use of the smart chips in the credit cards. Luckily I have a smart chip in mine even if this is not that much in use in Norway yet. But this means that it is safer to use the card when I travel abroad as you have to punch in your PIN code each time you use the card :d Regards Gard http://gardkarlsen.com - trip reports and pictures |
Hi logos...
If you go to Paris, for example, you will see at a restaurant if you present a piece of plastic for payment, they will bring a wireless terminal to your table...it has two ways of entering data (actually three, if the magnetic stripe is worn out, they can enter the numbers by hand)...it has a slot in the front for the chip & pin cards and a pathway near the top where the card can be swiped the normal credit card way..when the UK went over to chip & pin in February, I have seen these terminals make their appearance in the UK too...as you say Germany is behind the times as far as credit card acceptance is concerned and that might be the reason you haven't seen these terminals too often. As to whether or not chip & pin is safer than magnetic stripe, well the answer is evidently yes as you cannot just clone the card by stealing the numbers on it, a scam practiced widely in places like Paris...I am sure the vermin that pull credit card crime will figure out a way to come up with a handheld device that will copy the information off the chip and be able to clone cards pretty quickly...of course in theory these cards are useless without the pin so it means the eagle eyed theif (waiter) would have to watch you enter the pin.... It is interesting to note that several British card holders who used some Shell stations last spring just after the introduction and mandating of chip & pin found their bank accounts debited for cash taken from cash machines in the far east...the vermin were able to swipe the info on the magnetic strips (chip & pin cards of course are still required to have magnetic strips so they can be used in backward countries such as....the USA where the banks don't really give a damn about credit card crime...it's part of the cost of doing business and they simply pass the losses onto the people who don't use credit cards the proper way namely pay off their bills at the end of each month.... The British payment card association, however, has come out with rosey statistics showing the fraudulent use of credit cards has been drastically cut by use of chip & pin...it certainly does have its big advantages and I can only hope that at some point in the distant future, the USA banks adopt such a system but it will be a long time before it happens! |
thief...not theif of course but this backward message board is one that hasn't entered the 21st century and doesn't allow you to edit your posts after posting unlike 99% of the other forums I am on.
Fodors, get with it already. |
Speaking of backward systems, our health insurance chip cards aren't secured at all. You can access and change all the data on them with a simple card reader. As a result misuse is widspread. The public has to pay for all this and nobody cares, maybe except the insurance company who want the old card back as soon as they issue a new one.
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If you posted your post by using the "post my reply" button (rather than going through "preview" first), you should be able to back your browser up to the "post a reply" screen, make your edits, and "post my reply."
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Ira - we don't all hate you and the french hate us Brits even more!
and what about those american banks that "forget" that their customers have told them they're going to europe and block their cards? Our recent experience at the uffizi convinced me that lots of people from all over the place hate tourists! |
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