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Comment by coldcode | Hacker News Reader

I took my new chip enabled CC to Germany 3 yrs ago and paid for a train ticket with it. The clerk said "ugh an American card" and had me sign some random piece of paper. I felt like an antique.

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Most European cards use Chip & PIN with pin preference: If the terminal supports it the card will ask for a chip instead of a signature. Chip-based signature transactions are only used as fallback if the terminal doesn't support pins (which is very uncommon).

Unfortunately most US cards don't use a pin code at all. There are a few issuers that provide you with a pin code, but even in those cases there's typically a signature preference and the pin code is only used as fallback if the terminal doesn't support signatures. So if you're using a US card in Europe pretty much the only places where you can use the pin code are automated terminals (e.g., at train stations). At most other places you're going to have to use a signature.

There are a few US issuers that issue Chip & PIN cards with PIN preference - for example UNFCU and First Tech Credit Union. Those cards work great in Europe, but are sometimes a pain to use in the US. E.g., if you're paying at a restaurant and you have to go with the waiter to the terminal in some backroom, because the terminal asks for the pin. That's not an issue in Europe, as waiters usually carry mobile terminals with them.

> Those cards work great in Europe, but are sometimes a pain to use in the US. E.g., if you're paying at a restaurant and you have to go with the waiter to the terminal in some backroom, because the terminal asks for the pin.

Huh? I have a European card (chip & PIN, PIN preference), and at restaurants in the US I've always signed and never had to go to the terminal in some backroom.

Depends on the restaurant. Most of the times the terminal doesn't support PINs and so it falls back to signatures. But some restaurants use PIN-capable terminals in which case that issue occurs.

I think it also depends on what buttons they press. I believe if they select credit card it forces it to be a signature.

That's only for US debit cards where a debit transaction requires a PIN code, but a credit transaction prefers signatures. For credit cards with PIN preference it shouldn't make a difference, as it's up to the card to decide which mode to use (based on the options that are supported by the terminal).

I know some terminals here in the UK lie about their capabilities, for example they'll tell the card they're offline only even if they do support online transactions.

I've had a restaurant in silicon valley (three years ago?) tell me that they couldn't use my card because the machine kept asking for some number and they kept entering zeroes and it didn't work.

> I have a European card (chip & PIN, PIN preference), and at restaurants in the US I've always signed and never had to go to the terminal in some backroom.

I had that a few times in Asia (think Vietnam). I quite appreciate the times it happened. Instead of taking my credit card then hoping for the best I specifically have to authorize the transaction. In Europe they usually just bring you a portable device.

In Europe/UK they just bring the card machine to your table.

Yeah, When the pin first became popular in canada the technology was already wireless. They have a pretty good range too and i've never had a problem even on the largest of patios or the deepest corner of any underground hipster joint.

In Brazil wireless credit card terminals are also very common, and all I've seen use cell phone radios, so they work anywhere a cell phone from the same telco would work. Once in a while you still see the old wired terminals (which use wired phone lines), they are slower since they have to dial to the backend. And of course there are the terminals wired directly to a POS terminal (but places with these usually have wireless credit card terminals as a backup).

There are a few cards available in the US that do chip + PIN. Debit cards also work.

I have one credit card that I mostly don't use anymore, and keep the account open only because it does chip + PIN so I can use it at train-station kiosks in Europe.

The last time I had to sign when using my credit card was at least 20 years ago.

"The clerk said "ugh an American card" and had me sign some random piece of paper. I felt like an antique."

Don't feel so bad - remember that we invented the credit card.

Also the phone.

And the Internet.

These are mostly examples of inventions like the television that were not in practice some "out of the blue" discovery but instead a product of lots of small innovations at the same time. If the person who is usually acknowledged as "inventor" of these things had instead done something else they would anyway have come into use at about the same time but in a slightly different form and with some different person as inventor.

For your example of "the Internet" that's true only if you squint and choose TCP/IP as "the Internet". But if you take a step back the Network is a more or less an inevitability, I would insist on dating _that_ to at least the Treaty of Bern (1874) and perhaps earlier. Of course Bern moves actual paper letters, rather than just bits, but the central idea is there - the network effect, we must communicate with absolutely everybody, if we let national sovereignty get in the way of that we lose out.

The Egyptians invented metallurgy and several other things but I'm not sure they're leading anymore :)

Your argument looks a lot like a fallacy, to me.

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