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Comment by nzmsv | Hacker News Reader

Most cashiers hand my card back to me with the receipt to sign, and can't verify my signature. But many stores are now switching to using a PIN with chip cards, at least here in Canada. And Europe's had chip cards forever now. In fact, some places there no longer even have machines to read a magnetic stripe.

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Chip and PIN cards work pretty well (and yes I do know they have vulnerabilities) - I only use cash once or twice a month.

I actually can't remember the last time I used a credit/debit card and actually signed for something - that would seem rather quaint these days.

Chip & Pin has been a major headache for me...I'm living in the UK for a year and neither one of my Canadian CC's have chip and pin. On numerous occasions cashiers have to call management to find out if they're even allowed to accept my credit card....I just carry cash now.

Surely the answer to that is to set up a UK bank account and use a debit card (I make most payments with a debit card).

I am self employed and according to the banks I spoke to I am not staying in the UK long enough for them to give me an account.

It's become rather difficult to set up UK personal bank accounts, thanks to the "know your customer" anti-terrorist regulations. Plus, UK retail banks offer uniformly terrible customer service by international standards (I've experienced three UK banks). Using offshore credit cards has long been a common choice.

What's the advantage of chip + PIN over stripe + PIN?

In the first full year after chip & pin became mandatory in the UK card fraud in stores dropped by 47%. While retailers can still accept signatures, if they do so they are not guaranteed the funds. Before the change, if the signature matched then they got the funds regardless. Now the only way to be sure you get paid is to accept PIN authorised transactions.

What this article doesn't say is that a lot of stores ask for ID when paying by card... something that always surprises me; this NEVER happens at home.

It is much more difficult to clone a chip card than a magnetic one.

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