[rynd2it]

A supplementary story I heard was that the chip was the child of a French company, who required a fee of some fraction of a centime for each chip used in a card - which totalled up to quite a lot of mone. The US companies weren't keen on stumping up this fee, so chose not to use the system.

Which, of course, may be a case of not letting the truth get in the way of a good story!

In any case, your info is most helpful.

I successfully used a US credit card without the Chip/Pin in a major hardware chain BUT the fees charged by the credit card company and the exchange rates were truly horrendous - I'll never do it again.

My solution now is using my French debit card (from Societe Generale) and my Everbank account in the US to fund the SG account - all totally without any fees apart from SG charging €16 for receiving funds.

Cheers