I was surprised that two American tourists in Antibes had never seen a 'chip and PIN' card used. These have been in France for several years though they have only come in in the UK in this last twelve months. They work like the ATM at a bank but anywhere, using a palm size reader. The user hands their debit or credit card to the waiter or shop assistant,who puts it into the portable card reader kept at the business, the client taps in their 4 digit code (Personal Identity Number: PIN ) at the table or till and the card reader instantly prints out the receipt and debits the customer's bank account. This has almost ended retail cheque fraud; in fact you are hard pressed to find a restaurant in the South of France that accepts cheques at all; as well as cutting credit card losses enormously.

Has this appeared anywhere much in the US yet? It is strange that it was so slow to arrive here. There was a degree of resistance from small shopkeepers because the banks charged quite a lot for the little machines and many of these small retailers suffered little from fraudsters.

My bank (RBS) wrote to me about this nearly a year ago, but so far I have not had to use the new system, probably as I buy very little across the counter other than run-of the-mill shopping using cash, normally. It does seem to be an excellent idea, however, and I am pleased to find that it works so well in France. Typical of the greedy banks, however, to charge inordinately high fees to the retailer for the privilege of using their system...some things never change...
PS Methos seems to have responded to this post, as I have his offering in my inbox, but it does not appear to be showing up here...

Debit cards have been available here since 1979, when Visa issued their "Check Cards," though didn't become widely popular until about 10 years later.

My first memory of using one was at a "pay at the pump" gas station about 15 years ago. Now I don't know what I'd do without it. The small matter of entering each transaction into my check register seems to be my biggest operational difficulty.

I have no problem with banks charging a retailer for the system. Retailers, like several restaurants I frequent, are not forced to use the system and must make value decisions. Sometimes these costs are passed on to their customers. I am somewhat troubled that banks charge their customers fees for withdrawing cash at an ATM; in my banking days, a teller transaction cost the bank a lot more than a machine transaction and use of the ATMs for free was encouraged to reduce bank costs. Now that everyone is in the habit of using them - wham! - let's charge a fee.

Sorry for the confusion Ritzmar. I fired off a quick, but I felt not entirely coherent reply, so I quickly deleted it.

As 'Fuse said, debit cards have been around for quite a while. Restaurants rarely accept checks anymore, preferring debit and credit cards. At restaurants where you pay at your table, a signature is usually used with either card (because the reader is generally tethered down). At other businesses, PIN transactions are, I think, more common.

We do have cards with chips in them, which we call smart cards. These cards are pretty rare mostly because consumers have yet to see a great advantage in them. As I said, we use PIN transactions with traditional debit cards. Smart cards do offer the promise of consolidating various club and benefit cards onto your credit/debit card, as well as increased security, but that doesn't seem to have sparked a lot of interest.



'Fuse - does your bank charge you a fee when you use one of its ATMs or just when you use other bank's ATMs?

Thinking about it, it is slightly odd that we never had a simple PIN system for paying by a debit or credit card but still insisted on a signature when the customer was present. We only ever had PIN for ATM withdrawals of cash. And of course anyone can sit here and buy goods without using either PIN or signature, on the internet, which is even more puzzling.

As with you, debit cards have been around for many years in Britain. The chip cards have a potential for doing a lot of things; they are completely adapted to wire free cardreaders, for example, and can be interrogated for and used to obtain lots of info . I've yet to work out whether the ATM at my French bank that puts extra hours usage on a mobile phone (i.e pay as you go, favoured by tourists and by parents' of teenagers ) is related to this fact

The stupid thing about it is that when the chip and PIN cards started here it took about ten times as long as any other means and even, the first time I tried at an auction, involved my speaking to the Bank's security department (and giving every personal detail apart from my blood group and my dog's maiden name). This seemed to be rather against the idea of the system but I suppose if it were to lose money it would be in early days when cards were first sent out, possibly to fraudsmen at old addresses of customers or intercepting the mails; the risk being that the customer might not notice or be aware of non-receipt for a day or two, thereby giving the crook a few initial hours to strike.

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Originally posted by methos:
'Fuse - does your bank charge you a fee when you use one of its ATMs or just when you use other bank's ATMs?

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Good question! No, I am charged a fee only for using a "foreign" ATM. And this is OK, as a convenience and because banks charge each other for these transactions.

I am not sure if there are ATM fees for folks who don't have "free checking" so my may have been premature. I may be unnecessarily concerned that it's the next step when it hasn't happened, yet.

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Originally posted by coldfuse: I am somewhat troubled that banks charge their customers fees for withdrawing cash at an ATM; in my banking days, a teller transaction cost the bank a lot more than a machine transaction and use of the ATMs for free was encouraged to reduce bank costs. Now that everyone is in the habit of using them - wham! - let's charge a fee.

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My bank, in fact, doesn't charge a fee for its customer using its ATM machines. It does, however, charge a fee if you make a teller transaction that could be done by the ATM machine. Our podunk bank branch in our podunk town, however, waives this fee; if I were to make a teller transaction in a larger place where they don't know me, I'd be soaked for $3 every time I did it. There is something to be said for small town service.