Future shock
I make a lot of purchases from Amazon and I rent a lot of cars from Hertz. I pay for both with an American Express card. The card was due to expire in about three years. In today's mail I received a replacement with an embedded microchip and an expiration date further into the future. I activated the new card, cut the old one into little pieces with a dull saw, and watched the video on the American Express Web site that explains the new technology, including the protocol for inserting the card into a chip reader and using a stylus to sign the touchscreen. Then I logged in to my Amazon account and updated the expiration date associated with the card, so future charges wouldn't be declined. And after that I logged in to my Hertz account and found that the change had already been made.