North American Union

[vdeane]

One reason I'm not a fan of a PIN is that you don't get rewards points when you use a PIN (because those process as debit), in order to get reward points, you have to sign and not enter a PIN, because signature = credit.

I wonder if that's an issue... they'd either have to change their terms or invest in whole new systems to differentiate.

I believe chip-and-pin was originally designed to provide for credit card transactions in areas that didn't have good real time connectivity.

[mtantillo]

One reason I'm not a fan of a PIN is that you don't get rewards points when you use a PIN (because those process as debit), in order to get reward points, you have to sign and not enter a PIN, because signature = credit.

I wonder if that's an issue... they'd either have to change their terms or invest in whole new systems to differentiate.

I believe chip-and-pin was originally designed to provide for credit card transactions in areas that didn't have good real time connectivity.

That makes sense for when it was developed. But now in 2014, pretty much everything is connected to the internet. I actually think it is a good idea to disallow offline transactions, since if the system cannot verify that the card is active, I could potentially be on the hook for transactions made on the card after it was reported stolen.

Another issue with chip and pin...it was supposidly "unhackable". So in the EU, you cannot report your card stolen and have fraudulent charges wiped off of your account, because one factor of chip-and-pin was that the liability for bad charges shifted onto the consumer. Because the "only" way bad charges could get onto your card is if you gave out your pin. I definitely prefer that liability for fraud stay as-is, because it was definitely proven that the "unhackable" chip and pin is hackable.

I think chip and signature is a reasonable compromise. It has a chip so it can be read in a reader in Europe where they may not have swipe card slots anymore. But by forcing there to be some real-time verification that the card is not stolen, rather than relying on a PIN, then fraudulent charges won't occur, and if they do, the bank is liable as in the past. I've yet to run into a situation where my card was outright rejected because of a software issue where the cashier couldn't somehow make it work though.

[Pete from Boston]

I don't follow the technological stuff here, but I go to Canada about once a year with my crappy magnetic BoA card and have no problems.