With Visa in the US, never. Back when I bothered with American Express, well...that wasn't accepted at least once a month. The only place I have gone where a Visa wasn't accepted but a MC was is in Canada, but it sounds like you wouldn't run into that.If the concern is hauling it around in your wallet, the long-term answer is mobile pay apps. Even today, I can do at least half of my purchases this way and it means I don't even have to take my wallet with me on those trips. You can have all of your cards loaded in and switch between them as needed or desired.
Thank you for the "Canada" viewpoint. I am in Indiana, and if the DW had her way, I could *possibly* be dragged up there in the future. That gave me something to think about. Even though I chose an UBER Visa primarily for it's 4% on dining, I also chose it secondly for it's chip-and-pin capability. Even though I don't travel.
As for mobile pay, I have considered that for the future. As for now, I *rock* an older android phone that only runs JB 4.1.2, much to DW's chagrin. Most of the apps won't install on such an old phone, but the benefit is that I just purchase backup phones on ebay for $20 and never worry about losing/destroying a phone with backup images on my computer.
I believe your backup card should be a VISA and your main card should be a Discover or American Express. Otherwise if your main card is a VISA then there is no need for a backup card as pretty much 99% of merchants take Visa including Costco now.
As of 11/28/2018
@Np1791wrote:I believe your backup card should be a VISA and your main card should be a Discover or American Express. Otherwise if your main card is a VISA then there is no need for a backup card as pretty much 99% of merchants take Visa including Costco now.
My main cards are for maximizing NON-rotating category cashback rewards based on my spending habits. And they just happened to be mostly VISA's.
I agree with you that it seems to be that 99% of vendors take VISA. So everyone that has pointed out who "falls in the 1%" and any possible "network failure" stories help me & others plan ahead.
I work in big box retail and whenever the credit card network is down, it's all of them. I've never seen a situation where Visa worked but MC didn't. I'm sure it must happen if the main server at Visa crashed or something, but it's not a situation I've seen happen. I suppose that they probably have a lot of redundancies in place to make sure that it keeps working! However, the store likely has less redundancies in place, and It's always been a problem with our network when we weren't able to accept any cards at all.
So I guess that you probably have to worry about the store's network going down and accepting NO cards more than a particular branded network going down!
So I guess that you probably have to worry about the store's network going down and accepting NO cards more than a particular branded network going down!
