Originally Posted by
wco81
It seems like until they can completely eradicate the mag stripe, which means all the readers in the US have to be replaced with ones capable of reading EMV or NFC or Bluetooth 4.0, we're going to be in this gray area and Americans will be screwed as far as unattended transactions.
The mag-stripe is not going to go away. It will remain as a vestigial remnant of the card much like the embossed card numbers when they used to do it via the carbon copy imprinter machines. Besides, none of the other countries that moved to chip got rid of mag-stripes on their cards either. Even if the US moves to full chip, there are still card readers out there in many places of the world where they only have the swiper, or heck even carbon copy imprinters. Changing millions of readers all over the globe from your local gas station to a gift shop in Lusaka, Zambia isn't exactly a snap of the finger, flick of the light switch task.
And, it's always a good idea to keep older technology for backwards compatibility. Though old and outdated, payment via carbon copy imprinters has its positives that it can be done without electricity or connection to the internet which can be of great use in emergencies like the Tohoku Earthquake in Japan or Hurricane Sandy in the US.