[ecspike]

You can magstripe in much of mainland Europe still.

The Chip and Pin machines have a channel to swipe. There are very few places where you hand over a card. For example, in the train stations, the machine to swipe a card is on the same side of the glass as the customer. The agent never handles your card.

So they might be more accepting of Coin (given that they don't see that it is different) than American businesses.

[zmk_]

This is inaccurate. Whether you are required to hand over the card or not is governed by each member state's regulation. For instnace, in Netherlands or UK you can keep your card; in Poland you might still be asked to hand it over and sometimes for your ID with it. Also, good luck trying to swipe in the Netherlands -- most merchants taped the terminals so that locals do not get confused.

[sjwright]

In Australia, if you try to use a magnetic strip in situations where you could use the the chip (i.e. both the card and machine have chip support) it is refused, and the machine tells you to insert the chip.

It's entirely possible that Coin may still be useless outside the US if most machines will reject your card's strip.