Monday, October 12, 2009

Convenience Not in the Cards for US Travelers Abroad



According to a New York Times report, U.S. travelers are running into problems when it comes to using credit cards in certain places overseas. The prevalence of EMV (Europe MasterCard/Visa) around the world is causing problems, especially at unattended vending areas which don't have mag-stripe readers.



Unattended areas, such as ticket kiosks at train stations, gas stations, parking garages and other places where there are no cashiers have become problem areas because the kiosks don’t accept mag-stripe cards.



  • Twenty-two countries, including much of Europe, Mexico, Brazil and Japan, have adopted the technology, according to the Smart Card Alliance, a nonprofit association that promotes chip cards.




  • About 50 other countries are in various stages of migrating to the technology in the next two years, including China, India and most of Latin America, according to the association.




  • In the last year, Canada began rolling out chip-and-PIN cards and plans to stop accepting magnetic stripe debit cards at A.T.M.’s after 2012 and at point-of-sale terminals after 2015.

So, it looks like America will be the only country with mag-stripe technology still in place.



These governments like the cards because they reduce fraud. With an embedded microcontroller, large amounts of data can be stored on the card itself rather than in a central database, and counterfeiting such a card is difficult. But the United States banking industry has no immediate plans to adopt the technology.



Part of the reason, experts say, is that fraud issues haven’t been as prevalent here as in other countries. Editor's Note: Yeah, but Chip and PIN works, as  evidenced by the recent 23% drop in card fraud.  When every country has it except the US, then we'll see an even more dramatic rise in fraud here and on the Internet. 





Read the full story here





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