Originally Posted by
tmiw
In most regions where Visa and Mastercard operate, they've already mandated terminal and card support for contactless or are in the process of doing so. The US is definitely the outlier in terms of usage and overall merchant acceptance. Hell, we've technically had contactless since 2014 if you were willing to tap a phone but it got almost no use until the pandemic despite gradually increasing merchant acceptance.
If anything, waiving PIN for smaller transactions (by letting people tap instead of insert) might reduce fraud by making the physical card harder to use for larger purchases if it were indeed stolen.
If the US is an "outlier" then so is Japan, South Korea, Thailand, the vast majority of Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, South and Central America. Again, this was rolled out early in Europe because the banks there are supremely sensitive to fraud and often make it difficult to contest a charge.
US banks typically immediately credit consumers while they conduct investigations for claims of debit or credit fraud. European Banks, in my experience, do not give the consumer the same benefit of the doubt, often tying up funds until months later after they've done their utmost to disprove the claim.
With US consumers so well protected, not pressuring the banks, the cost of rapidly converting 1.4+ billion cards and tens of millions of terminals simply wasn't worth it vs the cost of fraud until recent years, as the technology became much cheaper.
No one I know is the US has lost money to credit or debit card fraud in decades. Yes, they've gotten bogus charges, but it's always quickly resolved.