Originally Posted by
kebosabi
Interesting read on why those banks who are implementing EMV, are going to chip-and-signature instead of chip-and-PIN:
Umm, isn't that one of the major problems where our mag-stripes don't work? The US banks just don't seem to "get" it.
The main issue with PIN is how to manage them and more importantly provide cardholders with a method to change them. There is virtually no infrastructure in the US right now to support that (i.e. ATMs).
There seems to be a factual disagreement. Here we have a Chase executive explicitly stating that Chip & Signature is compatible with the same devices:
Rather than speculating, we need input from those who have Chip & Signature cards.
While I only have Chip and PIN cards, and not Chip and Signature cards, I can say this:
1. The process for processing the transaction is the same - the only thing that is different is it will skip over asking for the PIN and print a signature line on the receipt instead
2. European banks do issue Chip and Signature cards to some clients. Canadian banks do as well. And many Asian banks only issue Chip and Signature cards. I've yet to hear of any problems by these cardholders compared to Americans using mag-stripe only cards
3. I think the hurdle is really mag-stripe vs chip, not signature vs PIN. Unless those train kiosks etc are set up to only accept PIN authentication and nothing else, Chip and Signature cards will work just fine. I really think what they are looking for is the chip, not necessarily the PIN.