by Michelle Higgins
Like many Americans who have tried to use their credit cards in Europe, Elliot E. Porter, a historian from San Francisco, has encountered his share of payment headaches. Perhaps the most aggravating occurred a few months ago at Amsterdam Centraal Station, where he learned only after waiting in line to purchase train tickets that none of his credit cards, which include a MasterCard, Visa and American Express, would be accepted. The problem? They rely on magnetic-strip technology rather than embedded microprocessor chips, which are becoming increasingly common outside the United States.
Like many Americans who have tried to use their credit cards in Europe, Elliot E. Porter, a historian from San Francisco, has encountered his share of payment headaches. Perhaps the most aggravating occurred a few months ago at Amsterdam Centraal Station, where he learned only after waiting in line to purchase train tickets that none of his credit cards, which include a MasterCard, Visa and American Express, would be accepted. The problem? They rely on magnetic-strip technology rather than embedded microprocessor chips, which are becoming increasingly common outside the United States.
“This is a big deal when traveling,” said Mr. Porter, who trekked back to his hotel to get cash, which he then had to exchange for local currency before returning to the train station to wait in a long line to pay for his tickets. He encountered similar problems at train stations in Belgium and Britain. “It just got super frustrating,” he said.There may be some good news on the horizon for Americans like Mr. Elliot. A few banks have begun testing cards with the newer chip technology, known as E.M.V. (for Europay, MasterCard and Visa) and are beginning to offer the cards to select customers. Wells Fargo has issued cards with the embedded chips to about 15,000 United States-based clients who travel internationally, in a trial program. JPMorgan Chase is offering the cards to some of its high-net-worth customers this month. Meanwhile, Travelex, a major currency exchange company, began selling a preloaded E.M.V.-enabled debit card last year. Some credit unions have also begun offering credit or debit cards with chips, including the State Employees’ Credit Union of Raleigh, N.C., and the United Nations Federal Credit Union in New York.
It’s about time. Over the last decade, such cards (commonly referred to as chip-and-PIN cards because users punch in a personal identification number instead of signing for the purchase) have been widely adopted in Europe as a means to reduce credit card fraud; the information stored in the magnetic strips used in traditional cards can be stolen fairly easily. E.M.V.-enabled chip cards, requiring a PIN for authentification, are harder to counterfeit and are becoming the standard in other regions, including Canada, Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region. More than a third of the world’s payments cards (approximately 1.2 billion) are E.M.V. capable, along with roughly two-thirds of cashier terminals (18.7 million), according to EMVCo, the standards body owned by American Express, JCB, MasterCard and Visa.
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