Is chip and pin required at ATM's in France

No, magnetic strip ATM/debit cards still work fine at ATMs in Europe. I used mine in France last month at several locations, no problem. My ATM card has no chip. However, for credit cards, chip-and-PIN is more widely accepted, especially at automated vending machines you'd find at a train station.

The other thing to consider is if your freinds debit card was even supposed to work overseas, which is a possibility; and if they notified their bank that they were travelling overseas (fraud protection strategies may deny overseas transactions) and finally, were their funds in a primary checking account available for withdrawal?

For good info, talk to your bank, while they sometimes will not be informed, they should be able to answer your questions best.

Older magnetic stripe credit cards should still work at ATM's in France and elsewhere. There could be many reasons why your friends card didn't work, such as:

• They forgot to notify their bank that they'd be traveling in Europe.
• The ATM they used didn't have an affiliation with Visa.
• The computers at one of the financial institutions may have been "down" at the time (I've had that happen - on one trip when my bank was doing system maintenance in the wee hours of the morning, it was late morning / early afternoon in Paris and my card wouldn't work - I waited an hour and tried again and everything worked normally).

I'd suggest that your friend should speak with the customer service at his bank, as they'll be the best ones to track down the source of the problem.

Looks like you've gotten the scoop.

Your friend might have been trying to take out too much money over limit. Need to remember the currency difference when picking how much money to withdraw.

The reasons above are all good reasons why you should carry a second ATM card with you.