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Comment by rav | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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> 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.

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.

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