Chip & Pin

Has chip and pin hit the United States yet? It's all over Europe and it's incredibly annoying when traveling. It's as though the system is designed entirely to keep tourists from making purchases. I'm curious if credit card fraud is actually any lower with the new system. I can think of a few examples that have annoyed us.

In Amsterdam all of the train ticket machines accepted Netherlands issued credit/debit cards only (no cash and no other cards). Luckily, they did have a ticket counter where you could pay cash after taking a number and waiting your turn with every other tourist that needed a ticket. It was worse than waiting at the DMV!

We didn't get as lucky this past weekend when we tried filling our rental car up with gas before returning it to the airport. Very few gas stations were open on Easter Monday. We found one open that was the unmanned type only accepting cards...and you guessed it, only French cards! We gave up as our car got lower and lower on gas (or diesel to be more accurate) and returned it empty. The charge hasn't come through yet, and I'm somewhat terrified to see how much it's going to be.

I don't really think about it here, but having visitors always reminds me that the UK is just as bad. We first realized this when Chris' Dad tried paying the deposit on his rental car and they would only accept a chip & pin card. I was reminded again this weekend when we were buying train tickets to get home from the airport and looked for a ticket machine which would allow my brother to use cash. It was really bad because the machines only accepted chip & pin and there was no ticket window to pay cash!