So if you're coming here from abroad, beware, because while this Tesco may stock an excellent chicken-and-stuffing sandwich, they will also refuse to take virtually any credit card from the USA (and likely a good number of other places outside the UK and Ireland).
When we heard here of the prevalence of the "Chip and PIN" system here, we were super worried and braved awful ATM fees to withdraw cash down the way.
Per Chase/British Airways:
"Further, customers in the United States traveling outside
the U.S. are not required to obtain a PIN. Merchants in
Europe (or other countries) are required to:
- Accept all cards with magnetic stripe
- Honor all cards bearing the Visa/ MasterCard brand mark
if they accept MasterCard
- Accept magnetic stripe as well as chip cards, even in
markets that are evolving to 100% chip card local issuance
You should urge the merchant to insert the card into the
terminal and follow the prompts. The terminal will
automatically request a signature. If the merchant insists
on not accepting the card, please call us at the number
listed on the back of your card, to report the merchant
name and address. "
The folks at the store were very nice and may have been scared by various tactics used at the outset of Chip-and-PIN stuff (see the Wikipedia article) into refusing our card, but apparently it's a legal no-no, and we'd like to prevent other visitors from having to go through the rigamarole that we did. read more