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The Platinum AF is billed about the second statement. If you cancel you can get part of it back prorated I believe. IDK about AMEX being widely accepted everywhere, most AMEX carriers (me included) are accustomed to carrying a back up. You have to whine a bit then pull out a Visa or MC. I'm sure the French will understand that part
If you can muster the AF it's a great travel card. Good signup bonus should help with the ouch of the AF as well, and you can use the points to help pay for the flights.
@bernhardtra wrote:Maybe one of the reasons for not having a card with a chip is that it is easy to steal the information from it. I have heard stories about how there are some people who hang around airports with chip readers and simply steal the card information and then either use or sell it. I have a friend that it happened to, so be careful maybe keep them in a steel wallet.
Really? An EMV chip? I believe that really needs physical possesion or very close contact with the card. There have been reports of such things with near-field (paywave or whatever), and with chipped passports, but most of these are theoretical (as compared to cloning the card by swiping, which really does happen!). SO the big question is: how does your friend even know what happened? If there were fraudulent charges, it could have happened any number of ways.
Not to say EMV is nearly as secure as vendors would like, but generally much better than mag stripe
@bs6054 wrote:
@bernhardtra wrote:Maybe one of the reasons for not having a card with a chip is that it is easy to steal the information from it. I have heard stories about how there are some people who hang around airports with chip readers and simply steal the card information and then either use or sell it. I have a friend that it happened to, so be careful maybe keep them in a steel wallet.
Really? An EMV chip? I believe that really needs physical possesion or very close contact with the card. There have been reports of such things with near-field (paywave or whatever), and with chipped passports, but most of these are theoretical (as compared to cloning the card by swiping, which really does happen!). SO the big question is: how does your friend even know what happened? If there were fraudulent charges, it could have happened any number of ways.
Not to say EMV is nearly as secure as vendors would like, but generally much better than mag stripe
Right.
EMV chips can't be cloned. Even if a transaction is recorded electronically that doesn't impair security since each transaction generates unique keys within the chip. The next use is different. It is being confused with the "chips" used in many cards that offer wave pay. This is common in the US and used for small amount transactions. Some of these chips can be read remotely. There is some clear and demonstrated risk with these but it's not been exploited so far. The biggest vulnerability is the mag stripe. These can be swiped by cheap mechanisms you can buy on ebay. Crooks can then clone the cards easily by rewriting the strip on an existing card (how many people actually check the swipe info to see if it matches the card number?). More sophisticates ops just make new cards. The tech is simple.
Not so EMV chip and pin. Card fraud has virtually disappeared in the EU outside of card not present purchases where the chip isn't used.
CSP is almost useless in France (have just come back from Nice a couple of weeks ago) - yes, you'll have no problems in huge restaurants and hotel chains, but forget about paying tolls / many parking garages and doing lots of other everyday things with CSP...
Saying frankly - I like how CSP looks, but I don't want to pay almost $100 just for the look, so most likely I'll not keep it for the second year.
I am still convinced that BofA Travel Rewards is one of the best travel cards out there. I wish I had a larger limit with BofA, then I would've probably never applied for CSP :-)...