Accessing money from a US account while outside it
Finally, we managed to get money from our US account into our UK account. The best advice our US bank gave us was to use our Visa card to get a cash advance against our US account. It worked, although the manager seemed a bit skeptical. Was she suspicious that we were trying to run off with someone else’s money? It’s our money, in our account, and we have ID to prove who we are. Granted, the initial advice to initiate an international wire transfer from the receiving end was dud advice, but that wasn’t our fault.[ad#ad-1]
One of the reasons that we had such difficulty is that we are transferring money internationally, which meant dealing with the currency exchange. Another reason, and probably the bigger reason, is that the US cards do not contain a special chip that the UK ones do. We can use it to draw money from ATMs, but there are daily limits and you need to know the exchange rate, etc. However, you may not use it as a debit card at any place here. That’s because they have a special card reader that reads the chip. At some places, they may be able to swipe it and use it as a Visa. There’s no guarantee that it will work. Our card has been rejected at several places. Some places cannot even manually input the card numbers.
My question is, is this chip technology required in the EU? Do all European countries implement it? Will the US follow suit? How much revenue is or will be lost if the UK shops cannot accept US cards?
