Originally Posted by
prathmell
It was like pulling teeth to get them to admit that this is the case. Isn't it a simple matter to program the chip to require Pin first then Signature? Why is this so darn difficult, and why is it so darn difficult to get a straight answer from the card providers.
Because most CSRs aren't trained readily to answer these technical concerns.
In the earlier years of this thread, CSRs didn't even know what EMV meant. They assumed "chip" was the contactless ones. And the copy-and-paste answer was "oh but per merchant agreements with VISA, they have to accept blah-blah-blah"
The next phase was finally training CSRs what EMV cards were and they did start issuing them per a request basis, but then came the technical problem of sending out wrong chipless cards over and over again because of internal communication issues. Some here have reported that early on when Citi was issuing out EMV cards on request, they would get a normal mag-stripe only card and had to try several times to get the right card. Even then, some CSRs were adamant that they "got the chip card, but you can't see it." LOL
Now the current phase is from the early adopters like us who are starting to get technical. Chip and Signature vs Chip and PIN, what is the CVM list, online PIN vs offline PIN, etc. etc. Again, something that CSRs are not readily trained to answer just yet.
At least that's starting to change now. But there are laggards out there (CapOne).