The Liberty Card costs 54 Euros, not 5.
http://www.carte-bancaire-rechargeable.com/visa.php

Joann I do not use my credit cards to any extent when I am in Europe -- I use my DEBIT cards to draw out Euros, and then pay in cash. My Credit cards are for emergency back-up only.

You seem to imply that Some Banks ATMs in Europe will now NOT accept our Magnetic-strip Debit cards with PIN, to obtain Euros? I am sure this cannot be!! There would be a bigger American protest demo than we are now seeing in Cairo!!

Please clarify! THank you.

Travelerjan, I did not imply anything. As I said in my second post, the link was taking a long time to open so I copied and pasted Newday's article.

OK, Joan you did not imply that... you just pasted what the article seemed to imply, it was very general & not backed up by any specific cases. But journalistic standards are of course not what they were in my day (the old-lady reporter huffed). So, I won't fret until I see something more specific.

I'm bringing this back to the top to see if anyone has tried one of the prepaid chip and pin cards available in France. I'm thinking of doing this to cover tolls and fuel during a 10-day driving trip from Lyon to Burgundy, then on to Troyes and Reims. But, only if the cost is somewhat reasonable. In an earlier post Kerouac said they were available for €5, but in searching online, I haven't seen anything offered for that low cost. (Interestingly, it seems that the biggest market for these cards is for people who want to gamble online.)

Anyway, if anyone out there has light to shed on this, please weigh in. I don't see the Travelex cash passport as an option, and being careful to always have a sackful of coins available doesn't sound great either.

Even "La Poste" is selling them, which would seem to imply that it is not a rip-off deal since La Banque Postale (a public service) is considered the be the poor man's bank, where you go when the other banks have rejected you in France.

But of course as a French resident, I still have no idea how this stuff works or exactly what it costs.

Chase is starting to issue chip and pin cards in June - http://www.secureidnews.com/2011/04/...-cards-in-u-s# to people who travel overseas.

This has taken forever.

I love the restrictive phrases, "won’t necessarily receive the cards unless they travel to areas where EMV is used," and "offering the cards to some of its high-net-worth customers."

This site seems to say that the Poste prepaid card has to be associated with an existing account with the Banque Postale:

http://www.cartebancaireprepayee.net...carte-regliss/

"Cette carte Regliss est lié à un compte bancaire La Poste, il n’est pas possible de la recharger via les recharges des cartes bancaires rechargeables (Neosurf etc)"

This is the Poste site:

http://www.carte-regliss.fr/

I'm fairly fluent in French, but it's entirely possible that I'm overlooking some information that could be useful.

Just found this interesting article:

http://www.nfctimes.com/news/us-bank...face-emv-cards

I'm contacting them tomorrow about getting one.

There's going to be an app for that!