Credit Card use in Paris

Most of the credit cards in the western world use a PIN in lieu of signature. For any transaction to be accepted, a PIN is commonly required.

Few US issued credit cards use a PIN (and a PIN used for a cash advance from an ATM is completely different). Most US cards still require a signature. Where that is not possible, for example at a ticket kiosk, your US credit card transaction will proceed and be accepted, no matter what PIN you use, even if you use no PIN at all.

We purchased a carnet (10 paper tickets) last week on the Paris metro with our chase credit card. No pin was needed.

Thank you!

We were in 7 Italian cities, and were concerned about the PIN thing. We got a PIN and did not use it a single time in 3 weeks.

metro machines for tickets do not require a pin. Use your card, when it asks for a PIN, wait, and the transaction will process. There is a Euro limit without pin but it is at least 75 Euro as I charged up our Navigo Ds with monthly passes on the machines in October with no trouble and the passes were 75 each (higher now)

And if you have trouble with the kiosk purchase (It doesn't always work for me) you can go to the ticket booth and the person staffing it will process your transaction.

We got a PIN and did not use it a single time in 3 weeks.

The PIN you received was for ATM use, it was not a PIN for use in lieu of signature.

Thank you everyone. I thought the pin for a credit card was unusual. Just got back from Scotland and never had to use a pin.

American banks made the decision to use the antiquated chip/sig cards system because they literally thought Americans were too stupid to be able to remember PINs. It is an obsolete and less secure system but here we are. If someone steals your card -- and it is a prime target of pickpockets, there will be 20K in charges on it within an hour as these thefts are organized crime and they are organized to harvest the card value before you even know it is gone. I know someone who had 30 K on their card when it was stolen at the Orsay and they reported it two hours later when they realized it had been taken. We had one stolen in St. Petersburg and it was 20K in financial instruments in the hour it took us to get back to our hotel and call the company. (Capitol One has a hair trigger fraud alert system which often blocks transactions BUT let that amount in financial instruments be put on the card in Russia which is a hotbed of this sort of crime.)

As the average American carries 6 credit cards, it was explained to me that banks feared that if all cards had PINs, some of the 6 cards would fall into disuse. It makes no sense not to use PINs for transaction verification, as if a signature carries more validity than a discreet 4 digit PIN.

I have a true "chip and pin" credit card. In other words it defaults to pin not signature. I do find it very useful in Europe and it saved us a TON of time in Russia several years ago. (Hermitage lines were for the staffed ticket windows were LONG and their machines did not take credit cards that were not true chip/pin Lots of Americans in front of us could not buy tickets even though they knew their pin, it would not prompt for the pin, but mine worked fine)

It's actually much more secure than what we have now. Now for example if you lose your card the thief can use it until you cancel it... but if it required a pin they would be out of luck. I think it's just that the 'risk' for the issuers is not high enough for them to bother to make the technology move.

And it's not just theft... I had my card compromised and they bought $20,000 worth of gold on it . I found out when my bank and law enforcement called me (They were setting up a sting to try to catch the culprits as gold has to be signed for upon receipt)

Interesting. About 5 and 6 years ago we were in St. Petersburg and spent 5 days at the Hermitage over the two trips. We had no trouble at all using our Chip/sig card in the ticket machines in the courtyard and then walked right by the long lines. Most of the people in those lines are locals who get cheap admission and clueless tourists who don't realize they can just buy from the machines.