...I will say this, though. One of the arguments being used by visa to defend its position that chip and signature is the direction to go in the USA, is that they feel people might be confused that using a pin will initiate cash advance fees. Do bear in mind several truths that have come out of this whole discussion. The banks make humongous profits on their payment card activities and the cost of fraud is extremely small in comparison to the profits to be had. If it were up to them, they have no problem with magnetic strips. On the occasions my card has been hacked, and it once was hacked for over $10,000 a decade ago, you know what their prime concern was? Not that they would be writing off the $10,000...all they were primarily interested in was how to get me my replacement card as expeditiously as possible (I was travelling at the time on the left coast from my home in NY) and sent the replacement card via overnight delivery and had it the next day. They (the banks) do not want to do one thing to impede people from using their cards. Period. They feel, whether rightly or wrongly, that people may refrain from using their cards if they have to enter a pin so hence no chip and pin in the USA. The only reason they began issuing emv compliant cards in the first place was not fraud but the complaints they were getting from some of their best customers, people like us who use cards for every last thing and travel with them and quite frankly I am old enough to remember being told by Karl Malden not to leave home without my Amex travelers cheques, of having to start each visit to a foreign country of having to exchanger the tc's fo local currency and actually having to spend cash. Now, today, I rarely need cash for trips of weeks at a time. Credit card everything. But the problem was the growing number of merchants outside the USA who were refusing to process USA magnetic strip cards. That issue has apparently been resolved for the most part; it does seem that despite many people's claims that chip and signature would prove to be worthless when travelling, most pos terminal process these cards on a routine basis and apparently the problem with unpersonneled kiosks in on the way out as of June 2015.

I don't lay awake at night worrying about my credit card being hacked; it is going to happen as sure as the sun will rise in the east tomorrow. I worry about not being able to use my card whenever and wherever I want for whatever amount I wish to use it for. And at least as far as I can see, much of that problem has been resolved. Now if only merchants would stop wasting my time by checking signatures on small purchases which does not one bit of good as far as fraud is concerned, we would be living in a much more efficient world today than just a decade ago.