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Every gas station accepts normal debit and credit cards.

On the other hand, skimmers and stolen cards are rampant at gas pumps. I'd be leery of deploying an unmanned roadside credit card reader. Maybe the extra vetting is an anti-fraud measure.

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This just isn't a thing in Europe.

Card skimmers most definitely exist. Many ATMs have a warning sign to check if the card slot has been tampered with. And the use of chips instead of the magnetic strips they used in the past makes cards impossible to copy.

It's not a crippling problem, but that's largely because of such measures.

I'm not sure where you live, but it absolutely is a thing in my part of Europe (the UK).

What about all the vending machines that take credit cards?

All vending machines taking cards in Europe are NFC rather than magstripe, so aren't vulnerable to cloned cards.

Not true. Most I know use chipped cards. Magstripe is indeed dead because it's woefully outdated and insecure, but there's more than NFC.

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