Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Both credit and debit cards in the UK and, I believe, in most Western European countries, have been "chip and pin" for many years; I don't know how many years it is since I last signed for a card transaction - quite a few, certainly!
Any idea why it's not been implemented in the US thus far? I don't think it's the doing of MasterCard or Visa, since both of those are chip and pin elsewhere.
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The US seems a lot more conservative (polite way of saying backwards

) as far as finances go. Cheques still seem to predominate, while they are on the verge of ceasing to exist as a general-purpose purchase mechanism here. Cash is more prevalent there vs debit cards here, and direct-debits for bill payment much less of a standard practice.
The other way of looking at it is that we are happy to put a lot more trust in our banks that they will just get it right (and have stronger consumer legislation), whereas in the US they want to retain a lot more control.