Three Tech Facts I Learned Overseas
Last year, I got to visit France for the first time. It had been a long time since I was overseas. How long ago? The last time I was in Europe, neither smartphones nor broadband Internet existed. My learning curve was steep.
Here are three important things that I wished I’d known before I left home.
Every credit and check card has a chip.
I learned very quickly that no one in France had payment cards of any kind with magnetic stripes. Everyone had chip cards and every store, restaurant, and vending machine had chip card readers. I knew that the U.S. wasn’t as advanced as other countries when it came to payment technology, but I didn’t realize that were that far behind.
So, how did this happen?
French bank cards had embedded microchips as early as 1992. The EMV smart card payment method was released across Europe in 1994. EMV stands for Europay, Mastercard, and Visa, the companies that created it. The real reason that Europe took to chip cards so early was not because of security reasons, but to save money. In the 1990s, credit card payment approvals were done over phone connections. This was cheap in America, but cost much more in Europe. There was no such thing as free local calling in European countries.
The first U.S. based smart card was issued by the United Nations Federal Credit Union in 2010. But Americans weren’t fully introduced to chip cards until 2012. Since then, chip cards have become much more common, but there are still a sizable number of U.S. credit and check cards that don’t have chips. Not only that, but most American chip cards still have the traditional magnetic stripe. If you travel with a card that only has a magnetic stripe, it will be accepted at a handful of local ATMs and nowhere else.
Your mobile device from the U.S. can use a charger made for a different country’s voltage system.
Left: US electrical outlet. Right: European electrical outlet.
U.S. household electricity goes from 120 to 140 volts; European household electricity is from 220 to 240 volts. I bought a voltage converter for my phone charger, but I didn’t bring all the parts. There I was – overseas with a converter, but without the plug. All the outlets I saw in France were round and recessed. The converter alone couldn’t reach the outlet. Thankfully my host – who traveled a lot – let me borrow one of his and told me that it would work. And it did!
I had to find out how this worked. It was because there is a manufacturing standard for common external power supplies – in this case, mobile device chargers. The European Commission (a part of the European Union) created this standard in 2009 to reduce the amount of old chargers ending up in landfills. Phone manufacturers around the world voluntarily complied, and began making phones that all had the same type of charging port and wall chargers with detachable cables. So, if you are overseas without a charger, you can buy one at a local store that will work with your phone.
Your phone charger can switch voltages.
There’s a lot more to the common external power supply standard. I looked at my phone charger when I got back home and noticed something interesting stamped on it. Note how in the above picture, my Samsung charger is stamped with the phrases “travel adapter” and “Input: 100-240V.” This type of device is known as dual voltage.
As I said before, U.S. household electricity is 120 to 140 volts and European household electricity is 220 to 240 volts. The European Commission specified that all chargers for mobile devices must be able to handle a wide range of voltages, automatically detecting the correct type when plugged in. If have similar phrases stamped on your device chargers, you won’t need a voltage converter. But you’ll still need an adapter for the outlets, since different countries have different shapes of outlets.
Travelling can be stressful, but advances in technology mean that you don’t have to struggle with the same problems travelers had 15 years ago. Now the next time you go overseas, you’ll know what to do.
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