Originally Posted by
Joe1690
I am not as familiar with EMV as other experts on this forum, but I did work in the banking industry for several years. The only reason I can think of that most banks in the US have decided to go with Chip & Signature rather than Chip & Pin is that financial institutions have trained debit card users to always choose signature over pin because it provided extra security & benefits when run over the Visa/Mastercard network, and also provided these same financial institutions higher interchange revenue(credit vs debit). Now I realize this is no longer the case with regards to interchange at least for the megabucks, but does a chip & pin card allow customers to choose credit (visa/mastercard) vs debit routing as current debit cards do? If not, this is the only possible explanation I can think of because banks can still encourage customers to choose credit increasing their volume for Visa/Matercard agreements and thus allowing them to meet guaranteed minimum spend volume similar to the Chase/Visa transaction volume agreement that has been talked about on this board.
The bigger problem is something I alluded to a few responses above. There is this idea very prevelent in this country that who cares what they do in the rest of the civilized world. It's our way or the highway. But how different is this then the isolationist spirit that gripped the country in 1939 and 1940 when Hitler was marching through Europe? I wasn't alive then nor were most of the people who are on this board or if they were, they were very young most likely.
Of course it was a different world then, I agree. The thought of hopping on a plane in NY and six hours later being in London for not all that much money comparatively just didn't exist, did it? But in many respects, our country and I'm just the messenger here has many many of its citizens living in an isolationist world. Big deal that they use chip and pin elsewhere. We don't need it. Our magnetic strips, yes a bit out of date, but they work. Same is true of some of the things I mentioned. Who needs the metric system? Who needs $1 coins? People who want these things are Europhiles as if that's a dirty word (I've been called that for advocating for chip and pin). The adage is most people don't travel outside the country so what difference does it make if some of these rich people can't use their credit cards in (you name the country). Just pay cash. Problem solved.
Another argument we hear is that even emv is out dated so why convert if something better is just around the corner (retinal scans?). I think all this is why chip and pin has not been introduced yet and may never become the standard here. One gets the feeling that the country is headed in the direction of chip and signature and who cares about the rest of the world. I could be and I hope I'm wrong but it's hard to reach any other conclusion.