Originally Posted by
phltraveler
This US Payments Forum Paper from 2019 (specifically the summary on Page 15, last page of PDF) seems to indicate that it requires proper routing on the US Common Debit AID, and that even with PIN bypass correctly enabled, it can create issuer declines and lost sales. If selectable kernel configuration is used, lost/stolen liability can occur on networks with a shift. If the global AID is used then no lost/stolen liability but it's the most expensive.
It seems like an area where a lot of merchants have said between the complexity and uncertainty and debit card users being used to PIN entry, might as well leave it on.
As someone who's had PIN preferring cards outright refused by US merchants before, "chip and choice" (mentioned in the summary of that PDF) is really de facto chip and signature without any real enforcement. We almost would have been better off if the networks just made signature/no CVM the official standard (and required disabling PIN as a CVM at the terminal level), at least from a UX perspective.
Anyway, given the number of problems I've seen trying to run contactless debit (to the point where most merchants don't even bother using anything other than the global AID anymore), I'm not surprised PINless debit (even just when inserting) isn't more common.