Just saw on another blog. Somebody was complaining they had received a USAA chip and pin card, used it in Europe and was always prompted for a pin. Earlier this month, on the pretext his account may have been compromised (this happen all the time today) he received a new card. He did not receive a pin. In any event he applied the Walmart test on the new card and lo and lo and behold, he discovered no pin was requested. He now had a chip and signature priority card.

So he called USAA customer service and the ignorant csr's told him no changes had been made (we know differently of course) and that they had no control over how Walmart verifies a credit card transaction. None of them knew, because it wasn't in their scripts, that as a "business decision", USAA had reneged on its original plan to offer true chip and pin cards and was going along with the rest of the American banking industry. But the whole situation brings up another question.

We knew that as the original USAA chip and pin cards expired, they would be replaced by chip and signature priority cards (it is still not clear if USAA "downgraded" cards will work with offline pin as a backup; we think it will but nobody has reported on this yet). But does this mean USAA is moving up the timeline and now replacing its chip and pin cards on the pretext they have been compromised which is probably a lie?