I should point out again that I'm Europe (France) based, so this might be different than the US. Note that when I say swipe the card, I mean putting the card an

I should point out again that I'm Europe (France) based, so this might be different than the US. Note that when I say swipe the card, I mean putting the card and typing your 4 digit pin. > Regarding presenting your “real card,” doesn’t using PayPal cause the same problem? No because when a marchant offer paypal, they know it, and they know you paid that way in advance. There is a very big difference between "you paid with a system that doesn't have a physical card, you knew it, we knew it, and we specifically allowed you to do it", and "you used CC payment but you don't have the corresponding physical card, we didn't know or approve this, and your explanation is that you use some sort of service online that hides the real card". Considering this is done to prevent fraud prevention, I'm sure you can see why this is very different. > Also, are you sure you even need to check in with the same card you paid with? Usually those systems that ask you to “swipe your payment method” are only reading your name from the card, and combining it with a confirmation number to look up your reservation. Hotels, airlines and others are using it as a fraud prevention and they explicitely require the card, of a proper copy of it to be present. They often explicitely state it on the checkout page, and on the printed receipt. The one time I had to go around this, Emirates phone support asked me to have a printed copy of the card AND a printed copy of the national id card of the card owner at check-in. With that said, they didn't actually check any of it, and this was before 3D secure (Emirates current official policy is that you don't need those documents if paid with 3d secure). But still, I would rather be safe than being blocked at the airport.