Cross your fingers! In January when my Citibank credit card expired, the new "chip" card arrived just in time for a quick 4 day London trip with 2 grandchildren and 2 daughters. Having just returned from a 2 week London/Amsterdam trip in November and having used my "old" strip credit card with no problems, I didn't expect any issues with the new chip. When we arrived in London, I gave the hotel my new chip card (signature only needed, no pin) and it was inserted into the machine. The machine read: swipe. When we "swiped," it read "insert chip." When we "inserted chip," the machine read "swipe." When I called Citi customer services I was told to have the vendor key in the numbers. NO ONE would do this in London. I was also told there was no code, only a signature. Fortunately one of my daughters had a credit card and paid for everything. When we got back to NY, new chip cards were waiting and I did get a phone call from Citibank. The reason was -- bad chip! So, of course, this freaked me out because we were leaving for St. Martin in 5 days and were going to be there for 3 weeks. Could Citi guarantee the new cards would work? I held my breath and took a wad of cash. Happy ending, the chip card with signature worked everywhere we went (but never used it for gas).