(USA)
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At least in Germany you can only bypass it for amounts smaller than 30 to 50 € depending on the bank, otherwise you have to use the pin
Yea the PIN on US credit cards used in the US is worthless. We are still behind the times, and asked for a signature (which is utterly worthless as far as security goes). It’s basically because US credit card processing companies have not been forced to update their systems. I cringe every time I am still asked to swipe my card (by far riskiest way to pay) because vendor will say their chip reader and tap to pay don’t work.
Your issuing bank doesn’t require a PIN for a transaction.
The merchant may be offered a lower processing rate for cards processed as common debit with a PIN, but it’s faster to enter the transaction without a PIN.
Well if you bypass the pin it is run as a credit card transaction as opposed to a debit transaction. The difference being that a debit transaction is deducted from your account immediately while it could take up to 3 days typically with a credit transaction. What difference does it make? Well if you are poor it makes a big difference. Imagine being out of gas and only having enough money to eat 1 meal that day and you get paid tomorrow. You can do the credit transaction and won’t overdraft your account because it buys you enough time to get your paycheck first.
Credit card compagnies know you well. If you get into a large transaction or multiple transactions outside of norm, they will soft lock the card until PIN is used to confirm you are still in control of card. Overall this is much safer as using PIN less frequently means it’s harder to steal.
Aren’t there limits to how much you can buy without entering the pin though?
Depends on the merchant also. Around here Giant used to let you do debit without a pin, whether it was the card or touchless (phone/device), but they’re back to requiring pins again.
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