Pay at Pump Fuel

Chip and PIN at a Chevron pump in the US? Last I heard they didn’t even have EMV inside at Chevron… are you sure?

P.S. to clarify, when you select ‘debit’ in the US, it attempts to run a card over various US ‘regional debit networks’ - always select ‘credit’. To be honest, I can almost guarantee your transaction was not chip and PIN, but rather magstripe. The PIN prompt would have been for an attempt to run over the US regional debit networks.

The fact you got that prompt (the credit/debit one) pretty much guarantees it wasn’t a chip transaction. If it was, it’d have read the chip and seen there was only one network AID.

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Hate to say it, but at the pump it was Chip and pin - I was prompted to insert card, remove it, then to input pin. Honestly, it might have been the case at the EPOS that I ran the magstripe - by that stage I was getting slightly flustered.

That definitely was not chip and PIN. The fact you were immediately prompted to remove it is a dead giveaway it was magnetic stripe.

The pump was attempting to do magstripe and PIN over the US debit networks, which would of course fail. Had you selected credit, it would have hopefully (if the BIN routing was at all correct) attempted a Mastercard transaction. In my experience, it likely would still have failed, but at least it’d have had a chance, LOL. If prompted for a ZIP code, enter the digits from your postcode followed by zeroes to make a total of 5 digits. It… might work (I’ve seen it work, not often).

P.S. Once EMV (chip) at the pump becomes more common in the US - right now, I believe there are only a handful of chip-enabled pumps in the whole country - these issues should become a lot less common.

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So what are the rules? CA should clearly be considered ‘Debit’, yet the guidance above was to treat it as credit. Is this always the case - that in the US a CA debit card should be presented as credit? (Thanks, by the way)

I’ve been emailing Costco to try and get them to accept our current account cards. It takes them about 10 days to respond but here’s their latest reply from earlier today:

33 pm

Already pointed out that it’s a full Mastercard debit card and given them the first six digits of the long number for them to check.

Fingers crossed!!

You’re welcome. On US terminals, ALWAYS select ‘credit’ - credit means to run it over the major global network (e.g. Visa/MasterCard/Discover/Amex/etc) that the BIN corresponds to.

Debit, on a US terminal, means to run it over a patchwork of US regional debit networks. By law in the US, all debit cards from major banks must support at least two non-affiliated networks. Generally, they support Visa or Mastercard (rarely Discover) - aka the ‘credit’ networks, plus a handful of the regional debit networks.

With a foreign card, always select credit, unless it is a Canadian Interac card, in which case select debit (it can run over the US regional NYCE network, and Interac isn’t a global network).

Clear as mud?

Also, you should only ever get the credit/debit prompt on a magstripe terminal - EMV (chip) terminals will see the Monzo card only supports Mastercard and that’ll be that. Application selection works completely differently from magstripe routing.

tl;dr: ‘Debit’ on a US terminal is only applicable to US (which can also work if you pick credit) and some Canadian debit cards. Always select credit with the Monzo card. If prompted for a ‘ZIP’ code with Mastercard, which is a US postal code, enter the numerical digits from your postcode, then add zeroes to hit five digits. With Visa, I believe you start with zeroes, again the goal is five digits. Amex - I have no idea. I’ve never found anything that works.

Hope this helps some!

P.S. if you want some further fun confusion, in the US ‘debit’ and ‘PIN network’ are often synonymous and have no relation to how those terms are used here. The US regional debit networks mostly require online PIN (as you saw) for both magstripe and chip transactions. Visa and Mastercard (the ‘credit’ networks) are signature for magstripe and ‘chip and choice’ (they don’t mandate what CVM banks use in the US) for chip, but almost all American banks program their Visa and Mastercard applications to prefer signature. Thus if you’re ever asked by a cashier swiping your card if you want to enter the PIN or sign, always say sign - that’ll have them pick ‘credit’ :slight_smile:

BUT, if they’re inserting your card for a chip transaction (except for ATMs and fuel pumps which are insert for magstripe, most terminals in the US insert for chip and side-swipe for magstripe, just like here), make sure you say ‘PIN’ because otherwise they’ll just hit enter and attempt to bypass the PIN, which is likely to result in a decline (not all UK banks will decline this, but many will, and I’m pretty sure Monzo does from posts on here).

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Thanks for the insight, I’m not sure what’s more impressive - your knowledge of how payments work in the US (is there any online resource to learn this, or is this just from trial and error?), or how much of a mess the payment card situation is in the US.

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Thanks @GalaxyMergirl! I always wanted to know this!

Just for reference:

I used to live there, and I took an interest in the incredibly messy payment card situation - it’s getting slightly better, but not much. Contactless still usually uses magstripe emulation, tip adjustment is still allowed, restaurants take cards away, some merchant categories like restaurants and pay-at-the-pump fuel rarely have EMV, etc.

There’s a bunch of resources online, also documents around the US EMV migration process make good reading too. I’d suggest starting with the EMV books, the Mastercard Rules and documents from the US Payments Forum (formerly US EMV Migration Forum).

No problem, I’ll reply in more detail over there…

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Costco petrol pumps now accept Monzo current account mastercards.

Tested it and it works.

One less barrier to moving fully to Monzo!

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Confirmed by seeing a friend use her CA at Costco tonight.

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Seems like its just Morrisons left to go! Fingers crossed for Jan!

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I got a nice email from Morrison’s customers support this morning:

Hello Jon

Thanks for getting in touch.

We are planning on updating our Pay at the Pump machines in January. This card will be part of the update.

Our Technology Team are happy to update this earlier for you at your local Petrol Station please can you let me know which store you visit.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Kind regards

Not bad at all Morrisons! I’ve sent them my reply so will test it soon and see what happens…

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They also asked me the same but in their further response made no further reference to it.

I’m going to try it in the morning and see what happens!

Morrison’s does not work, even at my local station they asked for details of.

Used my Monzo card at Costco Pay at Pump, and was chuffed to see it worked :slight_smile:

Just an update for Morrison’s…

Still doesn’t work :ok_man:t2:

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It does now :smiley: :tada:

I’m reliably informed this should now be fixed!

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I can confirm that too. Just filled up at my local Morrison’s and the sale went through just fine. :smile:

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Tried at Morrisons @ Doxford Park, Sunderland, and the Pay at Pump machine didn’t work with Monzo :frowning: Had to fall back on Lloyds to pay at pump.