Originally Posted by
tmiw
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.
Why the need to "mandate" anything? (Informed) choice is generally a good thing. I say, let the issuers issue whatever cards they want, and let consumers decide. Likewise, if merchants don't want to support PIN, make it easy for them to disable PIN on their terminals and/or get terminals that just don't have pinpads, so PIN-preferring cards go through as signature (assuming signature is on CVM list.)
The key, and the thing that has been lacking, is education for all parties on what's going on, particularly on the merchant side. It really isn't that complicated, and it baffles me how poorly that aspect of the EMV rollout has been handled in the US.
Really, there's NO reason that a PIN-preferring card should ever have trouble in the US (as long as it has signature on its CVM list.) If a restaurateur decides that he/she's not going to get portable terminals, then he/she should be able to set the fixed terminal not to support PINs as a CVM. Easy, problem solved.