Or Stay Home. That's Guaranteed To Work

We've had this before, but it bears repeating that if you travel from the U.S. to overseas locations and expect that you can use your Visa or MasterCard or Amex, you probably can't. Why? Because everywhere BUT the U.S. has cards with smart chips, and their card readers can't authenticate the old magnetic strip cards that are still used by 100% of cards in America. And for some things, like buying train tickets at the ubiquitous ticket machines, you HAVE to have a smart-chip card. So they're telling you to bring cash or use ATMs to get cash. They're not fixing this anytime soon, either. So you know. (Seattle Times)

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