I suspect mostly cost. For the card issuers, to manufacture chip cards costs a lot more than a standard card. So the banks need to be convinced that the amount of fraud reduction would outweigh the costs of manufacturing the chip cards. Also, retailers would require equipment to read chip cards. Since its the card issuers - and not retailers - that cover fraudulent activities - I suspect retailers are reluctant to pay for new equipment for a system that would put the onus on them for this. As for fraud prevention - I admit I don't know how much chip typically prevents. I admit I'm not a regular reader of the CC forums though. Is there proof that it has significantly reduced CC fraud?

Also don't know about Europe - but in Canada, they were obviously pretty convinced of the benefits. Believe retailers were given incentives by the banks to upgrade to the chip card readers that are wireless. Definitely part of that is the transaction charge - retailers there now pay a bigger fee to the banks if they swipe instead of use the chip.

As for the US, my CSP card is now chip - but chip and signature. While there are definitely other US-based chip and signature cards, not sure if there are many, if any, chip/pin cards issued in the US. Also read somewhere that the large Target hack may be the turning point in the drive to get chip cards as the US standard. Basically, the reading went something like while the use of chip cards would not have prevented the data breach itself, it would have prevented the ability for the perpetrators to produce cards using the stolen data.