Foreign credit cards are not always valid currency at Finnish petrol stations.

The online financial newspaper Taloussanomat reports on the problems that foreign tourists have in Finnish petrol stations with regard to bank cards.

“Foreign Visas and Mastercards don’t work in Finnish service stations. In some stations you can’t even pay with your card at the cashier. The credit card, the car tourist’s trusted travel companion, doesn’t save you from a shortage of petrol in Finland. The data system in self-service gas stations is so old that it can’t read foreign credit cards, according to Savon Sanomat.

You can only pay with your card in a couple of dozen Neste service stations which are all located in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. Credit cards don’t work at Shell, Teboil or ABC. You can’t even pay at the cashier in a quarter of ABC stations and in some Teboil stations.

The problem is due to the fact that the machines in the petrol stations are not linked to anything. Instead, they recognise the Finnish code numbers from the data that is uploaded into their system.”

Taloussanomat 27 July 2008
Justin Sullivan - Lehtikuva