US credit cards are no longer accepted in the UK
If I was an executive of a US bank looking to corner the market in corporate credit cards, I would be telling my management that they had to adopt Chip and PIN immediately or expect to lose the business of corporate international travelers.
You cannot use a US issued credit card in the typical UK store any more. If its not Chip and PIN it simply does not exist as far as they are concerned. Whatever the Visa and Mastercard exchange rules might say on accepting all current cards is irrelevant as far as the underpaid sales assistant is concerned. No chip, no pin means no service.
And the situation is only going to get worse. Chip and PIN does have some security issues, but those reported to date are all due to the need for interoperation with legacy magnetic stripe systems. US banks can complain about their cards not being honored in Europe as per the merchant card agreement, but the European banks are unlikely to be very interested. Chip and PIN has all but eliminated card present fraud.
