Although we were exhausted from the long drive late Saturday night, we were filled with excitement and anticipation as we arrived in the sleepy little village. If only our gas tanks had been so full!

We managed to get to the petrol station on fumes the next morning, only to discover it was closed on Sundays. No worries, we thought, as we confidently selected the "pay by credit card" selection on the self-serve pump that was open.

The credit card machine had all the logos on it - Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express. We inserted card after card. And each time the machine rejected our cards. None of us possessed a Smart Card!

This scene is quite common for the American traveling outside the United States these days. Smart Cards, also known as "chip and PIN cards" have been around for some time in Europe, Asia, Canada and Mexico, but the U.S. has lagged behind. The main reason is that it is costly for both banks and merchants to make the transition.

Recent retailer-hacking incidents, like the breach at Target, are creating pressure to make the move more quickly. Visa and MasterCard have given retailers an October 2015 deadline to purchase the necessary equipment to process Smart Card transactions. Currently, only a few banks issue Smart Cards to U.S. cardholders.

So what do we Americans who travel overseas do in the meantime?

Before you travel, contact your bank to see if they offer Smart Cards. If not, search online for a bank that does. Don't get caught like I did!

The story behind how we managed to fill our tanks that Sunday morning is pretty amusing and perhaps another topic for a future blog. In the meantime, have you ever found yourself in a foreign country with a useless credit card? What did you do?

Posted by Shelley Laverty, IDEAS Recruiting and Placement. Contact me at [email protected].