Comment by jltsiren
1 day ago
I've never had trouble buying train tickets with a credit card in Germany. If I had to guess, your issue was that you were trying to use a card that didn't support chip-and-PIN or contactless payments.
1 day ago
I've never had trouble buying train tickets with a credit card in Germany. If I had to guess, your issue was that you were trying to use a card that didn't support chip-and-PIN or contactless payments.
Two years back the S-bahn ticket machines at the aiport only supported chip+pin, not contactless. Had to open my banking app to figure out my pin code, as I wanted to use my corporate Amex
> didn't support chip-and-PIN or contactless payments.
As opposed to... swiping the card?
Are there really cards out there that exclusively support that?
Chip and signature, which often means just the chip without further authentication.
EMV has multiple options. Many countries (including the US) chose the signature option for credit cards for convenience and use PINs only with debit cards. Before contactless payment apps became common, that was a major source of friction when using American credit cards in Europe.
I'd argue we picked it for legacy reasons - Americans are not used to the chip/pin concept, and adopted EMV very late because of a variety of legacy reasons (massive installed base of mag stripe equipment, and systems to deal with the inherent slightly higher fraud).
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> As opposed to... swiping the card?
People still do that? Are you posting to us from 20 years ago?
Very few Norwegian issued cards, if any, have a magnetic strip. It's too easily cloned.
I’ve never received a debit or credit card in Norway without a magstrip. One of the points of having one is to use it in places abroad where chip or contactless isn’t implemented. It’s become thinner but the stipe is still there.
If you work near high field magnets, mag strips don’t last long. Chips are fine though so that’s another bonus.
Both my DNB and Nordea cards, as well as my personal and corporate Norwegian AMEX cards all have magnetic strip, and they’ve all been issued somewhat recently.
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Yes, magnetic strips are easy to skim or erase.
If this story was more than a few years ago it's plausible that the card didn't have a chip. I still have a VISA debit card without a chip, and it was issued only two years ago.
Also chip-and-pin is mostly not enabled with American credit cards or card payment terminals
Prepaid gift cards (please note: those are not store issued) dont have chips and it is sometimes a problem to use them. But I doubt someone would buy a plane ticket with them.
A gift card isn't a credit card, though... ?
4 replies →