Credit Cards in Europe

Steve is right. Our experience is the same. One further note on unattended gas pumps; this will usually occur on Sundays or holidays so for these times be sure to fuel up beforehand.

With two credit cards, be sure one of them is a Visa card.

Thanks for your suggestions. We will be traveling in France via car, and Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, and Hungry by train. Will we need to use cash for the tolls on French highways? Had hoped to use the automated ticket machines at the railway stations for the rest of our trip to save time. It seems we will need to buy our point to point tickets from a travel agency or a live person at the railway station.

Steve & George are both right. I'd just add that you don't need to carry around a lot of cash. Your US-based ATM/debit cards will work at virtually any ATM machine in Europe, and ATM machines are everywhere. Just withdraw cash as you need it along the way.

Rule of thumb is that your US credit cards (with rare exceptions) won't work at any automated credit card terminal, such as gas station pay-at-the-pumps or unmanned highway toll lanes. But just hand your card to an attendant and you'll be fine.

Can't believe USA Today is printing such misinformation.

Tom, I don't know why you are surprised. We see it all the time in our local papers. There is a difference between someone who has been there, done that,experienced that, as opposed to just reading about it or finding it on the internet. Travel writers are no exception just like some people on this site. They are interesting in selling an articles, see or read something that is slightly different, run it pass a travel editor with limited experience and suddenly someone is paid and an article is published. I once challenged our local travel editor on that point and her response was along as the article contained an element of truth it was OK with her. Hopefully Susan and other like her will have enough smarts to double check everything -- which she did.

When traveling in Europe, I pay cash for everything I can. But that doesn't mean I have to have enough cash for the entire trip. ATMs are as ubiquitous over there as they are here. Most banks have one. At today's rates, you can get about €400 at a time (make sure your bank gives you a daily minimum of at least $500). I usually hit the ATM when the cache in my moneybelt gets down to about €200. So I am carrying an average of €400 (€200-€600) with me. Since I find myself spending about €70/day, that's enough for 5-6 days. When I am traveling with my wife, I spend less then twice that.

"we really don't want to carry around the amount of cash we will need for everything on this trip."

Most people carry their ATM and credit cards in the same place as their cache of cash. If you lose them both, the cash lost is an inconvenience, but the loss of your cards, and the ability to get any more cash, is a disaster.

And, BTW, I was in Germany and Austria last Aug/Sept. I don't have a chip card. I had no problem with ATMs or with rail ticket automats.

In Germany, there is something called the Geldkarte, which is a prepaid card with a chip. I'm going to try one next trip, so I'll be able to report more. I think it is sold by most banks and you can load it with cash, supposedly from an ATM. You might also be able to load it from you credit card. Only downside is that it only holds €200.

I used my "chipless" credit card this week. I had no issues. (No toll roads were involved however)

With all respect to Steve, knowing that American banks assert that "most payment terminals" will accept an American credit card will be of little solace when someone is out of gas and the automated gas pump wants a chip&pin card.

American credit card companies want to avoid the expense of switching to chip&pin technology. Their pronouncements about the acceptability of American cards in Europe should be considered with that in mind.

The prudent thing to do is to travel each day with either enough cash or an ATM card that assures access to enough cash to get you fed and to your bed.

Thanks for all the input. We will travel with debit/credit cards and plenty of cash. If we do have an issue or two, it will all work out some how and will be just another interesting travel memory!

PITA that us North Americans don't get the chipped card but it still is manageable. I do have a feeling however that it will be harder and harder to use a credit card without a chip in the future.

What is the reason why North America has not adopted this technology? Do we have too many cards to remember a PIN for each one?

My experience is that it's getting easier to use non-chipped cards in Europe. Holland was one of the first countries to switch over several years ago. At first it was very hard to use magnetic strip cards, the only merchants that would take them were hotels. Now most every merchant has readers attached to their registers that have two slots: one for chip cards, a second one for strip cards. Although some merchants need the credit card's pin number to finalize the transaction.

Why doesn't the US make the transformation? Two reasons. Chip cards were invented to cut down on counterfeit cards for some reason this has never been as big a problem in the US as other places around the world...so there's no economic incentive. But the main reason is that in the US, CC company's charge merchants more for a CC card transaction VS. debit card transaction. If the switch were made to chip cards, more transactions would fall into the debit-card category meaning billions of dollars of lost revenue to banks and Visa/MC.

For example when you use a debit card to make a purchase in the US, the customer is given the choice of doing it as a credit or debit transaction (you can only get rewards if it goes through as a credit). If the switch were made to chip cards all these POS transactions would have to be treated as debit, since a pin would always be needed to finalize the transaction.

Another reason chip-and-pin cards don't exist in the US is that in UK the customer is liable for fraudulent charges if a PIN is used. In the US the customers' liability is limited by law. Therefore UK banks & merchants have more incentive to adopt the chip-and-pin. It shifts the liability to the cardholder. This is called the "liability shift."

The article referred to below only refers to the UK but I suspect the same is true in other European countries.

Source: http://www.bankrate.com/finance/credit-cards/are-chip-and-pin-credit-cards-coming-1.aspx

Michael: you said

"If the switch were made to chip cards all these POS transactions would have to be treated as debit, since a pin would always be needed to finalize the transaction."

You lost me with this argument. Why does the use of a PIN mandate a debit transaction?

Are there any American-based credit card companies that currently offer a card with chip technology? How about an American card with a chip AND free foreign currency transactions?

The only US credit card that has chip cards is American Express, but the catch-22 is that not a lot merchants in Europe accept AE as a form of payment.

Why does the use of a PIN mandate a debit transaction?

The technology is called "chip & pin". They put a chip in your card, you enter a pin to finalize the transaction. Merchants hate the fact that customers can choose credit or debit. Should the US switch over to C&P merchants then have the right to force all debit card transactions as debit.