I’m waiting for a flight so let me blow off some steam.
Before I left I went to Bank of Taiwan, told them specifically that I was going to the US, and I asked them to make sure I could use my ATM card while there. They verified that I had set up an international PIN and assured me it’s would be no problem.
I just tried Bank of America and Wells Fargo ATMs and my Bank of Taiwan card was rejected. I swear, with the hours that banks in Taiwan require to get anything done, even simple transactions, you’d think you could depend on them knowing what they’re doing.
Fortunately, by now I expect this kind of disappointment and so bought some US cash beforehand to bring with me. At least my TW credit card has been working.
I’ve posted this 2024 photo of a Taiwan bank before, but here it is again …
Taiwan and their cumbersome 6 digit PINs, that need to be rekeyed for every card that has international ATM access. Good job at isolating yourself even further, financial backwater.
Who did they copy the idea of 6 digit PINs off anyway, was it Singapore?
The issue the OP is talking about is you have to explicitly set up another ‘international’ PIN when you get a card here that is enabled to work outside of Taiwan. Well, at least with my bank, and apparently his. There is no way of knowing whether it works until you get there. It really is a hold your breath moment the first time you use an overseas ATM.
This happened to me as well. I tried both the 4 digit and 6 digit PIN and neither worked. When you call them they say ‘Go to the branch’ even though they know you are in another country.
I actually asked if I could go to their branch in Sydney so they could fix it (1.5 hour flight from where I was) which they thought was stupider than taking a 10 hour flight to Taiwan.
I worked out that I could use my card at stores credit card machines, it asked me to sign not for a PIN, but just not at ATMs.
Weird cos signing for credit transactions was phased out in Australia years ago. That was the only work around I had
Fortunately it seems just about everywhere accepts credit cards, so the amount of US dollars I brought with me should be OK. It’s just that technology that’s supposed to make things easier and more convenient never seems to work for me
I found BOT was the worst bank I’ve ever dealt with, second worst was Hua Nan. Both of them operate in archaic ways, even more so than many government departments.
I had to get some physical NTD cash converted to foreign currency. Hua Nan bank made a photocopy of all the foreign notes and made me sign every copy (about 10 pages). Later I received a largish sum from an overseas real estate sale and they froze my account until I went into the opening branch with documentation on where I got the money. No, I couldn’t email it to them or send it electronically.
One word - “redundancy,” especially regarding anything critical. I keep multiple accounts so, in case one fails, I can use the others. And this is not just in Taiwan, but in any country I bank in.
After some bad banking experiences in Taiwan my wife decided to open an account in every bank. They shut her down after about 5 accounts. The teller told her that there is a central system banks use which records how many accounts you have and when they were opened. Open too many in a short period and you will get rejected.
Had the same happen with MEGA some years ago, went to my local branch before travelling and they assured me everything was set up correctly and it would work. Of course it didn’t work, tried many different bank ATM’s and all rejected it. Call MEGA’s service line and they told me that some setting had not been set and could only be activated in a branch, in Taiwan. Got back to Taiwan and went to my local MEGA who insisted that my card should work perfectly well in any country despite my insisting that it in fact did not work at all! They told me it must be a broken ATM I tried, told them I tried many, must be the overseas bank, told them I tried many, must be the country I was in, told them I was in 3 different countries and it ddin’t work in any of them, still insisted there was no problem on their end despite what their customer service told me. Called customer service in front of them and put the phone on speaker, customer service told them what needed to be changed, they insisted that setting “had nothing to do with overseas transactions” but changed it anyway. Then told me maybe there was something wrong with my ATM card and I should request a new one. Took a trip a month later and the card magically worked in a foreign ATM! Once. Called customer service and they told me they blocked the card as it was suspicious that it was used abroad and had never been used abroad before…I just carry cash and use a credit card these days.
I’ve never needed to use a debit card abroad, what’s the use case? 5+ credit cards + couple hundred in greenbacks + local currency is always enough for me.
this is the JCIC, each FI when opening a new account need to inspect your profile with the JCIC, which shows all the accounts (including credit cards) open to your name and their status.
Too many accounts (either cards or bank accounts) open in a short period of time is one of the common indicators of potential money laundering and hence an alert signal.
withdraw when you are short of cash, that’s it. Some might use them to purchase stuff as some folks don’t like credit cards, hence they use debit cards to transact.
Yeah using it as a last resort, but seems like people here use it as their first choice without carrying any cash. If a credit card gets stolen then it’s the bank’s money that’s on the line, but if your debit card gets stolen then all the money in your account is potentially on the line. Luckily Taiwanese banks have the highest standard of fraud protection - the card simply doesn’t work abroad. Y’all should be thankful.
the 6 vs 4 digits PIN charade is really so silly even from a technical perspective.
The reason behind this division is that the Chip and contactless circuits use 6 digits PINs on TW cards, but they decided (for no logical reason) to restrict the usage of those only for domestic ATM transactions, so they route the overseas ATM transactions to the magnetic strip, where instead is encoded the 4 digits PIN.
On the cards we issue at my company in HK, all the circuits (chip, contactless and magnetic strip) are all encoded with 6-digits PINs and programmed to fall-back to signature if the POS is not PIN enabled.
It’s a super simple matter of configurations… but probably the first guy set it like that and no one thought of changing it…
