Originally Posted by
glbltvlr
The problem is that I am definitely not the typical US customer. I travel internationally 2-3 times a year for both business and personal reasons, and when I travel, usually for 2-3 weeks at a time, I definitely am not part of the all inclusive package tour crowd. I'm not particularly concerned about transaction security - that's the issuers problem. I do place a high premium on blending in.
I am curious as to why Citi chose to issue pin preference for their corporate cards. I happen to work for a Fortune 50 company, but I'd be surprised if our T&E buyer asked for PIN preference. I haven't heard of anyone with a Citi corporate card saying they had a signature preference card, so it sounds like a Citi decision.
I also had one of the USAA pin preference cards before it was replaced with a signature preference card. Would really like to know why they made that decision and why they didn't at least offer the option to their members.
The main problem seems to be that the banking system's decided on chip and signature but hasn't "officially" mandated it. That is, required terminals and cards in the US to not support PIN at all for the global AIDs much like in other chip and signature countries (Hong Kong and Singapore specifically). Since it's still possible to have a PIN preferring card issued in the US it can't really be disabled* on the terminal side, so you end up with the situation where smaller businesses act more like the ones in Singapore et al yet aren't well prepared to handle the rare exceptions that require PIN.
And it's not like Visa/MC can't do it either. Visa for instance seems to require specific non-purchase related CVM entries on US issued EMV cards (on top of the "unattended cash" one for ATMs) so they could have mandated signature preference for purchases if they wanted to. On the terminal side they could have mandated no PIN support as part of certification too.
*Some places do waive PIN < $50 but I wouldn't really call that "disabling" it. And it's definitely not being mandated or even allowed in some cases either.