For Americans, Plastic Buys Less Abroad

No, I posted an article on pickpocketing earlier. This one is new.

I posted the link to the article a few days ago under the heading, "Chip and PIN Credit Cards"

You can put your head in the sand if you like but the article is accurate and spreading. We have been in Europe since Sept 7th and found that our VISA would not work well in the Netherlands and Belgium especially train stations ticket machine. Debit card worked OK but not credit cards.

I just got back from Holland yesterday, and in my experience it seems the situation is improving. In years past more or less the only merchants that would accept magnetic strip cards were hotels. Last week and in my other trip in June, I noticed that a lot of merchants have new CC machines in front of their registers that have slots for both chip & pin and magnetic cards; there used to be just a single slot for chip cards. But Dutch Rail, and the supermarket chain still won't accept our cards....Dutch Rail won't even accept them at the counter. BUT you will need to know the pin for your CC, they will not accept a signature.
I do have a credit card that has the new RFID PayPass chip in it, and I was successfully able to use it at some merchants in Switzerland.