PenFed Chip and Pin Cards

[RicHowe]

I read somewhere that my new PenFed PowerCash Rewards Visa Card is also a Chip and Pin card which will be awesome when I travel to France.

Bien sur, je veux pratiquer mon français! 

I can't find any info about it anywhere online at the PenFed website. I guess I'll call in to a CSR, but does anyone have any information or experience with this issue? Any travel pointers or tips for me? Any issues using the card at kiosks and such in France or in other European countries?

Merci beaucoup!

Side note: I wished my AMEX and Chase cards were also chip and pin. We need to get with the times in the US.

[SBR249]

My Plat Rewards came with a PIN but I thought that it's a signature priority with PIN CVM fallback for unattended POS. 

[Anonymous]

I stopped using the PenFed overseas , over half the transactions ended up in fraud denials . They just dont have the support or the success rate of Cap one overseas. 

[Anonymous]

I recently travelled to Europe and used my PCR flawlessly. Even used it at an ATM for cash back. I did put a Travel notification on it prior to Travel.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:
I recently travelled to Europe and used my PCR flawlessly. Even used it at an ATM for cash back. I did put a Travel notification on it prior to Travel.

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But did it work as chip priority?   When I used mine (some years ago) it wanted my signature rather than going with a PIN.

[Anonymous]

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@RicHowe wrote:

I read somewhere that my new PenFed PowerCash Rewards Visa Card is also a Chip and Pin card which will be awesome when I travel to France.

Bien sur, je veux pratiquer mon français! 

I can't find any info about it anywhere online at the PenFed website. I guess I'll call in to a CSR, but does anyone have any information or experience with this issue? Any travel pointers or tips for me? Any issues using the card at kiosks and such in France or in other European countries?

Merci beaucoup!

Side note: I wished my AMEX and Chase cards were also chip and pin. We need to get with the times in the US.

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Like others have stated, the PenFed cards are Chip + PIN enabled; however, the card will want a signature for most transactions involving face-to-face transactions. If you ever need a true Chip + PIN priority card, the UNFCU and First Tech CU are the only two financial institutions that I know of that offer PIN priority and that are available to anybody (anybody with decent credit of course). 

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@RicHowe wrote:

I read somewhere that my new PenFed PowerCash Rewards Visa Card is also a Chip and Pin card which will be awesome when I travel to France.

Bien sur, je veux pratiquer mon français! 

I can't find any info about it anywhere online at the PenFed website. I guess I'll call in to a CSR, but does anyone have any information or experience with this issue? Any travel pointers or tips for me? Any issues using the card at kiosks and such in France or in other European countries?

Merci beaucoup!

Side note: I wished my AMEX and Chase cards were also chip and pin. We need to get with the times in the US.

---

Like others have stated, the PenFed cards are Chip + PIN enabled; however, the card will want a signature for most transactions involving face-to-face transactions. If you ever need a true Chip + PIN priority card, the UNFCU and First Tech CU are the only two financial institutions that I know of that offer PIN priority and that are available to anybody (anybody with decent credit of course). 

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I think most casual travelers can get by these days by just adding their cards to their preferred mobile wallet. It depends on the country, of course, but it might not be worth the trouble to bother trying to get one of the few cards that support it. Especially since it does make the card more of a hassle to use in the US (in part since the networks seem to be resisting making our use of signature/nothing official and requiring PIN to be disabled on terminals), but that's a different subject for another thread.

(I know that on my last visit to the UK, there were only a few occasions where I had no choice but to use a physical card. I brought my Diners Club MC with me along with other cards but honestly even chip and signature worked okay the few times I used it. Using Apple Pay, of course, meant no signature required at all.)

[RicHowe]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@RicHowe wrote:

I read somewhere that my new PenFed PowerCash Rewards Visa Card is also a Chip and Pin card which will be awesome when I travel to France.

Bien sur, je veux pratiquer mon français! 

I can't find any info about it anywhere online at the PenFed website. I guess I'll call in to a CSR, but does anyone have any information or experience with this issue? Any travel pointers or tips for me? Any issues using the card at kiosks and such in France or in other European countries?

Merci beaucoup!

Side note: I wished my AMEX and Chase cards were also chip and pin. We need to get with the times in the US.

---

Like others have stated, the PenFed cards are Chip + PIN enabled; however, the card will want a signature for most transactions involving face-to-face transactions. If you ever need a true Chip + PIN priority card, the UNFCU and First Tech CU are the only two financial institutions that I know of that offer PIN priority and that are available to anybody (anybody with decent credit of course). 

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That's good to know. I'll app for the Odyssey Rewards World Elite MasterCard as I get closer to travelling. Would be nice to have a good high-value MasterCard in my mix I suppose.

[UpperNwGuy]

My experience with PenFed chip+PIN cards (Promise Visa and Power Cash Rewards Visa) is that they default to signature mode in stores, restaurants, hotels, tourist attractions, and anywhere else that a real person was processing the charge.  My experience with these cards at unattended train ticket machines has been mixed.  The ticket machines at the Swiss train stations processed the card without asking for a PIN or a signature (and that made me worried, because it meant that anyone finding my card could do the same thing).  In Lyon, France, however, the ticket machine for the local subway asked me for my PIN exactly as if it were a European card.

Given this mixed experience, I have subsequently joined the United Nations Federal Credit Union and gotten their Azure Visa.  It always requires a PIN just like the European cards.  In fact, it even requires me to use the PIN at my neighborhood Whole Foods and CVS.  The UNFCU website is clunky, and the application process is a bit tedious (everything requires manual approval), but as someone who travels to Europe once or twice each year, I find their Azure card to be indispensable.

[RicHowe]

I was looking at that card too. You have to be a member to app?