Barclay chip and pin success and failure - Italy

[ficobgtx]

After reading through: http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Credit-Cards/Chip-pin-not-working-in-Europe/m-p/3263704#M909830

I figured I would give an update on my experience with Barclay Arrival Plus (mine is the WMC version, not the Elite but I doubt that matters for this). I setup a pin as soon as the card was converted back in May from the non-chip card.

Travel was in Italy.

Most transactions went through as chip and signature as expected.

First attempt at chip and pin was a coke machine in the Rome train station. After struggling through directions in Italian, I finally found it was asking for a pin. Success!

Next try was a unattended gas station near the Florence airport. Fail. I don't think this was a chip and pin specific failure as it didn't even get to that point. It just said chip was invalid (not exact language used, but something to that effect). I tried my CSP just to see what it would do and got the same message.

Gald I had my Fidelity CMA ATM card...needed the cash after the fill-up even with a pretty fuel efficient Fiat Panda.

So no huge issues, but I'm glad I had the cash for the gas. Everywhere else, even outside the bigger cities, took cards without issue. A lot of places still have minimums (10 Euro min at most coffee shops).