Tag: USAA

Why Do Rental Car Companies Charge For Extra Drivers? And Do You Always Have To Pay It?

You’ve gotten a sweet deal on a rental car (hopefully because you’ve read this article). You’ve figured out how much your toll charges are going to be, and you’re prepared because you know what you need to do about the insurance. You even know how to pay for your rental car by using your debit card. You get to the car rental desk and BOOM, you’re stuck with a daily fee so your spouse or friend can be an extra driver.

What’s up with that? And moreso, is there any way to avoid it? Funny you should ask…

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Chip + PIN Cards; Why You Should Have One

By now, I’m sure you have a credit card with a chip, or EMV chip to be specific, in your possession. It’s that thing on your card that makes the person at the checkout tell you, “You need to use your chip in the bottom thingie,” or makes them say when you try to insert your chip card, “We don’t use that chip thing yet, so you need to swipe your card.”

amex-everyday-preferred
That thing on the left side of the card is the “chip”

In the U.S.A., we like the think we lead the world in just about everything, but when it comes to credit card security we are decades behind the curve. EMV ( Europay, Mastercard and Visa) chip technology was introduced back in the 1990s and rolled out throughout Europe in the 2000s. The chip in the card is used to confirm the information instead of reading the information off the magnetic strip on the back. This technology is harder to counterfeit and, supposedly, cuts down on fraud. The banks in Europe rolled out this technology first because credit card fraud was, at the time, much more common there. When the chip cards were introduced and helped prevent fraud, the criminals went to the least protected market, the USA, so they could continue with the scamming. Lucky us.

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