Credit Cards

[Roarmeister]

How many of your CCs are Smart as is "chip enabled" vs the simple magnetic strip? 

Most card issuers available in Canada started converting about 3 or 4 years ago and use both the magnetic stripe and the smart chip.  I have 6 CCs (1 business) and 1 bank card, all but one is chip enabled and the 5th one is due for a reissue soon.  Most CC readers are also chip enabled, in fact people are forgetting how to use the simple stripe readers.  I went to pay for a meal the other day and forgot the PIN number for my business card, so I told the gal to just use the conventional swipe method. The gal at the counter didn't even know how or couldn't remember, it's been so long since she's done it that way.  I know - it is a PITA to have to remember yet another number or several but it is the wave of the future.

Some vendors are now even starting to refuse to use non-chip enabled cards.  The link below shows that Europe is all chip enabled and those that don't have the EMV chip (EuroPay MasterCard Visa) maybe SOL when it comes to making payments.  One wonders how many Americans in London for the Olympics found out the hard way?

http://www.bankrate.com/finance/video/credit-debt/traveling-without-emv-credit-card.aspx

http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2011/10/20/us-credit-cards-add-chip-and-pin-security/

http://thefinancialbrand.com/24559/bofa-chip-credit-cards/

[logan_720]

I wish it were standard for US card issuers. I would love to have chips in ally cards. So far, the only ones I have that I have chips is my BofA Cash Rewards and my BofA Priveleges with Tracel Rewards.

[mmduluth]

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logan_720 wrote:
I wish it were standard for US card issuers. I would love to have chips in ally cards. So far, the only ones I have that I have chips is my BofA Cash Rewards and my BofA Priveleges with Tracel Rewards.

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Yeah but if the U.S switched to chip & pin we would lose a whole lot of the great fraud protection we have today.

[mikka1]

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mmduluth wrote:

Yeah but if the U.S switched to chip & pin we would lose a whole lot of the great fraud protection we have today.

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Well, first of all, don't dream of this happening overnight. I still spend a lot of time in Russia, where (probably because of proximity to Europe) some banks started to issue chip and pin cards many years ago already, but many other banks still issue stripe only cards. 

Most of the stores have POS terminals that can process both types of cards (many of them now are three-types actually - magnetic stripe, EMV chip and contactless chip (paypass/paywave)), so in Russia it will be hard to find yourself unable to pay either with striped or EMV card.

Though even if this decision is made, you can reasonably expect another 4-5 or even more years of wide acceptance of "traditional" magnetic stripe cards. You can partially judge it by the spread of contactless terminals now - I think it's already more than a year from the time those contactless cards were first presented, but I can still rarely see those terminals anywhere (actually, the only one I often use my contactless cards at is at New York Penn Station, where you can buy NJ Transit tickets with contactless card).

The second thing is that I might not fully follow your logic, but based on my experience as a customer in Russia, where unfortunately credit card consumer protection law is far from its excellence and much worse than here in the US (actually, some cardholders are still being held liable for unauthorized charges due to fraud if they can't credibly prove that they were unable to perform the specific transaction for some obvious reasons), adding EMV chips to cards made them safer for consumers, at least for the reason that now they can not be easily copied. I might be wrong in details, but in general if a customer with EMV-chipped card disputes the 'card present' transaction, that has been processed using magnetic stripe (e.g. due to the old type of terminal installed at the store), the customer almost automatically 'wins' the dispute and the merchant is held liable for that charge (for not complying with the most advanced security standards). 

Of course, one might think of other scenarios how the card might be compromised and used my unauthorized person, but I don't really see why this would necessary make the situation with consumer protection worse?

[compassion101]

I don't have any with chips in USA. I have a Canadian bank card that has a smart chip and it's nice to use, but I've never had a problem yet in Canada using my u.s. swipe cards.

[The_Gardener]

I have a chip in my BOA card, it serves no real purpose but looks cool.

Im also signed up for the tay to pay but i dont really like it. Pay wave and Pay pass are way better IMO

[HiHiHiHiHiHi]

My Cit Simplicity card has a chip. I called Citibank and asked for it, I think all Citi Mastercards can be chipped.

[CreditScholar]

My debit mastercard does but it's issued by a foreign bank. None of my US-issued cards have any, although that will change in the near future.

[DaveSignal]

I have two:  BoA and SDFCU.  These are the only cards I will be using for the next 3 years since I am in UK and swipe transactions always make things more difficult for the merchants.

[LS2982]

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Roarmeister wrote:

How many of your CCs are Smart as is "chip enabled" vs the simple magnetic strip? 

Most card issuers available in Canada started converting about 3 or 4 years ago and use both the magnetic stripe and the smart chip.  I have 6 CCs (1 business) and 1 bank card, all but one is chip enabled and the 5th one is due for a reissue soon.  Most CC readers are also chip enabled, in fact people are forgetting how to use the simple stripe readers.  I went to pay for a meal the other day and forgot the PIN number for my business card, so I told the gal to just use the conventional swipe method. The gal at the counter didn't even know how or couldn't remember, it's been so long since she's done it that way.  I know - it is a PITA to have to remember yet another number or several but it is the wave of the future.

Some vendors are now even starting to refuse to use non-chip enabled cards.  The link below shows that Europe is all chip enabled and those that don't have the EMV chip (EuroPay MasterCard Visa) maybe SOL when it comes to making payments.  One wonders how many Americans in London for the Olympics found out the hard way?

http://www.bankrate.com/finance/video/credit-debt/traveling-without-emv-credit-card.aspx

http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2011/10/20/us-credit-cards-add-chip-and-pin-security/

http://thefinancialbrand.com/24559/bofa-chip-credit-cards/

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None of mine are