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Comment by pidg | Hacker News Reader

I understand chip+pin is still a novelty in the US.

Back in 2009, I was (apparently) the first person to use the chip+pin machine in one of the biggest bookstores in Toronto - the cashiers got excited and all gathered round to watch. It was a little bit bizarre.

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It's totally standard in Canada now. Usually when a place doesn't take chips it's a US-owned chain.

For a view on another part of the world, just in 2012 in Japan it seemed like about nobody knew about these. Some stores didn't even know they had a pad for entering a PIN, and some didn't know what was the "enter secret code" instruction.

I only understood that after a week and maybe ten or so places had told me "your card doesn't work", when some hotel tenant called her daughter to translate things, and she knew about chip and pin and was excited to see how it worked.

I'm pretty sure all the other places just saw some message they didn't really understand, and just thought "the card doesn't work", when in fact they probably just had a pad somewhere that was waiting for my input.

Just before that, we had stayed in Taiwan and used the same card pretty much everywhere with absolutely no problem.

Japan is still highly cash based per transaction.

That's odd, how far out in the sticks were you? I've used my european chip card extensively in Japan for the past 3 years with no confusion whatsoever, and most places that take cards have a chip reader that they use immediately. Nobody has ever said my card doesn't work. There's actually way more confusion when I pull out a WAON card or something.

It's been more of a problem in places in Thailand and Singapore where they're not really equipped to hand over the card terminal and sometimes I have to go behind the desk or something.

The first place I had a problem was actually a Honda (I think?) car rental office in Shinjuku, not a place where I expected a problem (and not the easiest thing to pay in cash, though that's what we eventually did).

Then a few hotels and ryokans mostly around Nagano and Toyama. The 7/11 ATMs worked fine though (but the card didn't work to pay directly, it did at Lawson though, IIRC) so we just used cash everywhere, but I liked to keep trying to use the card, as I was really not sure what was happening.

It's in a small hotel in Obama that I finally understood what was happening, after the woman first asked me to "write my secret code" on a piece of paper (she didn't know the keypad was attached to a long cord and that she was supposed to let me enter the PIN myself, her daughter figured - or knew - that).

I don't really remember but I think we just didn't have many issues afterwards, once in the larger cities of the Kansai.

It was kind of a pain to have to use cash so much because my card had a rather low limit on cash withdrawal at foreign ATMs (of course, my other card had been mailed by mistake by my bank to my former place just before I left). I just didn't expect at all that it would be so difficult in Japan.

I was in the UK with my non-chip and pin card and there was a similar response. It took like 5 people at Tesco to figure it out.

Yeah, I can't remember the last time I saw someone sign for or swipe a credit card in the UK: it's all chip-and-pin now, all the time. This looks like cool technology but it just wouldn't work here.

Pro tip: if you're in the UK and think Chip+PIN is a really good way for the bank to shift liability to the cardholder and want to make your life miserable, ask the bank for a Chip+Signature card. That'll fuck things up for you on the regular.

Which will fuck things up? I can't tell if you're saying Chip+Signature will avoid the problems or make them worse.

Chip+Sig makes things worse in terms of day-to-day purchasing. Vastly worse. Your card no longer works in ATMs, retailers pitch a fit when they figure out your card is making their PDQ spit out a receipt to be signed (some even will try to refuse your card), and automated machines, like the ones found on the London Underground don't take Chip+Sig cards so you actually have to line up to see a human.

I eventually just gave up and got my cards reissued as Chip+PIN.

It depends where you are, I suppose. I live in an area with a lot of transient foreign nationals working in banks nearby, and they're used to dealing with non-chip cards at my local Tesco. The person in front swiped a Venezuelan Visa with no trouble the other day.

I had to use ye olde magnetic stripe and signature at a Morrison's a couple of weeks ago. The card reader was broken for some reason. Naturally the magnetic stripe on the first card I tried was also broken and wouldn't swipe...

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