>When you pay with _credit_card_ to Dutch railway ticket machines you >will be asked to enter PIN code ... European credit cards have an embedded chip that does a crypto handshake using your PIN with the bank to validate the transaction. This process is known in English as chip+pin and is considered equivalent to a manual signature. There are, as far as I know, no US banks currently issuing cards with chips, which means your US card won't work in a ticket machine that requires a PIN, even if your card has a PIN that works to get cash at an ATM. For over the counter transactions, the machine that clerks use can typically handle both chip+pin and swipe with signature transactions. R's, John PS: See the Light Blue Touchpaper blog at the University of Cambridge for more than you ever imagined about how screwed up the implementation of chip+pin is. But it's what all the banks in Europe use. _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf