Europe has made a massive push for this technology the last couple years. Organized crime out of eastern European organized crime has been harvesting card numbers and creating fake cards.
Late 2005 VC/MC dropped most of the fraud protections for the merchant if they didn't update card terminals to take the new RF style cards.
The push to do the same in the US isn't nearly as big as fraud in the US is extremely low. Merchants are more concerned about how reward cards are costing them extra discount points.