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Comment by phire | Hacker News Reader

I don't know about everywhere. But in my country, when the terminal fails to read the chip, it asks you to swipe the magstripe. Then it realises "oh this card should have a chip" and forces you to insert again.

After about 3 cycles, it gives up and accepts the magstripe (plus the pin)

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In Norway, on the 3rd cycle, if it actually accepts more tries, you have to sign the receipt and if the purchase is more than 1000 NOK/130ish USD (might be higher) they have to phone the bank to verify/get a verification code to put on the shops receipt.

Often it will just deny the transaction completely and the shop queue grows _looong_

My understanding from working in a bank in the UK is that it is the shop's discretion to use signature instead of PIN with Chip & Pin however the bank does not refund/guarantee fraudulant signature transactions like it would a PIN code.

I've lived for long durations in the UK, France and Switzerland I've never seen this happen in any of them. However, I have seen it happen twice while traveling for a few days in Norway.

In the US, I have to try the chip and fail three times. Then it prompts me to use magstripe. My chip does not work, so have tested this a LOT.

Curious question: can you request a replacement card be issued? Broken chip sounds like something reasonable to replace for (insert mumbling about poor user experience and whatnot here).

I had this happen with American Express. Went to two stores in a row where the chip failed and I had to use a different card. Went online to request a new card and they sent one out immediately with no charge or really any questions (I think I did say that the chip stopped working, but that was it).

Later, before the new card arrived, I tried using the old one again and it worked, so I just chalked the whole thing up to those two stores likely using the same payment processor that was having issues that day or something.

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