Originally Posted by
osamede
And why not? You see, it will take decades before chip and pin could be 100% standardised across technically lagging regions such as Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, South America and......err....USA. yet the idea of a visa or mastercard is that you can go anywhere worldwide and it is accepted. So merchants in Europe will still be accepting this card even if in a few years it is 100% in use in Europe. And that is not close
I
Eastern-Europe is actually in the forefront of chip-card acceptance, due to the fact that plastic usage is booming and they have much less legacy systems to replace. So if a vendor starts accepting plastic, all his systems will be naturally chip-enabled.
I completely agree about the USA - it's really neolithic, with their checks and stuff. My father-in-law still remembers using checks in the late '70s, but it's the 21st century now, for crying out loud
As you said there should not have any problems with magnetic stripes only cards - the card readers have also magnetic readers for people coming from less advanced countires (and for AMEX users :-))