Wait…what? You heard me…. OK. All jokes aside…since I live in Washington, DC (for a little while longer), I’m not exactly traveling here. That said, I thought I would share 2 interesting experiences in the last 10 days when trying to use my EMV equipped Hilton HHonors Reserve Visa from Citi.
- Example 1 – I attempt to buy a soda and a snack at a convenience store. Clerk swipes the card. Then swipes it again, and then again. I ask if anything is wrong. The clerk responds “I’ve never seen this before….it says “Use Chip.”" I replied that it is a chip equipped card, and asked if the reader they were using had a chip slot, which it did. Clerk inserts card into slot, machine responds as usual, and prints a receipt.
- Example 2 – At a favorite watering hole of mine, I offer my Hilton HHonors Reserve Visa for payment. I watch the owner of the establishment swipe the card. Stare, then swipe again. He’s too far away for me to ask what’s going on. Then I see him insert the card into the establishment’s Chip equipped reader. Machine spits out a receipt for me to sign.
To my knowledge, these are the first 2 times that this has happened since I’ve been carrying the card. Is this a trend? Are the card networks now requiring you to use the “chip” feature of so equipped cards here in the USA? Have any others out there had the same experience? Just curious. Feel free to discuss in the comments section.
Disclosure: If you apply for and receive a credit card through the link in this post, I will receive a referral bonus.
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Same at Rita’s Italian Ice in MD, The teens working swipe the hell out of the card before a manual entry. I can catch that half of the time by teaching the few who will listen to me say stop (and explain what a chip is), the other half are typical teens & know more than you.
Welcome to my life. About 1/2 the time I use it, the clerk gives up and manually enters it. Or, worse, tries to tell me the card was rejected.
Generally, that’s how the terminals are designed to work – if the card has a chip, and the terminal has a chip reader, you will be forced to use it. I’m a little surprised it’s taken so long for chip enabled cards to be introduced to the US. Cards here in Australia have had the magnetic strip and a chip for years, with an additional chip for contactless payments being added in the last year or so. Here’s hoping secure NFC is activated for Android devices in the near future – then cards will be a thing of the past altogether.