Strategy to obtain US Amex

[aaa99]

At Woolworths self checkout, you're prompted to sign on screen and the roaming staff member "verifies" it. They seem relatively accustomed to doing this (presumably for tourists)

Never used the physical care at Woolworths. But digital card seems to work fine.

Edit: if you the premier card, it is 3x for groceries. Could be additional bonus when buying those weekly gift card offers in store

 

[sudoer]

Never used the physical care at Woolworths. But digital card seems to work fine.

To clarify - I was just commenting on how Woolworths self checkout handles signature cards generally.

For Woolworths purchases I'd normally use a Wish GCs (purchased using HSBC at 5X) but in the above case, I used my Chase WoH card for a bunch of small value transactions with the physical card to season it before switching to Google Pay.

My Chase WoH seems to have no signature-free threshold for small value transactions ... even $10 requires a signature!

 

[levelnine]

Only problem is the Costco I usually fuel up at is unmanned and the only option is to insert the card and put pin in. They really need to upgrade their hardware tbh, I can't believe they don't have a contactless option by now.

Petrol pumps can be difficult with US cards. In Europe where they require a PIN, I often gave up and used an Australian card instead.

In addition to trying 0000 and the ZIP code associated with the card, sometimes you can ring up the bank and ask them to set a PIN for transactions (as opposed to ATM withdrawals) — some US banks do that.