"Richard" wrote ...
I remember before we had chip-and-PIN, France was a troublesome area.
For a few years there were stories of real humans erroneously
rejecting foreign cards but eventually that settled down and we were
left with the usual problems at machines. RATP and SNCF took pride of
place at the front of the list of awkward buggers.

As it happens, France was the first with chip and pin, right back in 1992
(12 years before anyone else!).

So while they were cutting credit card fraud by 80%, the rest of the world
wasn't, and they were somewhat suspicious of 'foreign' cards.

Now much of Europe uses c&p, and the French have had to rebuild, as -
surprise surprise - the agreed system did not match their pioneering one.

And, as we now know, the USA is actually the last Big Country to join the
party; I'm guessing that older machines are much more likely to be
magnetic-strip friendly (and there's plenty of pre-2005 machines out there).

Side note: since we all went Gung-Ho for C&P, the crims have moved on too,
and now "security" is a bit of a joke (and I'm not talking about TfL Knowing
that I took a 43 from Angel to Highbury corner three days ago, either!)

It's a Grand Life, Grommit!

Andrew