Yeah, here in Canada the magstrip has all but gone the way of the dodo - it's chip-and-pin or tap everywhere here. IIRC vendors here stopped taking magstrips before the Americans even.

Cards still have magstrips on them but I can't remember the last time one got used. Maybe a gas station.

Same in Aus. I think banking innovation like this is way easier in smaller countries like australia because there’s way fewer banks. The USA has hundreds of banks - so getting them to all agree on a standard is near impossible. It’s no wonder America still uses ACH and cheques.

Australia has just 6 banks. And they have a history of collaborating on things like this - since a fluid economy raises all boats, and fraud hurts them all. All Australian cards and point of sale systems support chips and taps. And have for nearly a decade.

There's a similar situation in Switzerland, where a handful of banks dominate the national market despite some smaller (cantonal) options that mostly have their own consortium anyway. The larger banks cooperated on creating a mobile payments platform known as TWINT [1], which allows for fast and free individual payments for splitting the cost of a meal, private sales, or even many in-store transactions. This allows them a competitive advantage over alternatives such as small Swiss banks or foreign banks that the many non-Swiss residents in Switzerland may otherwise continue using. These other options are relegated to IBAN transfers which are notably less convenient.

[1] https://www.twint.ch/en/

I think the problem is less the country size and more that the USA had a legislative structure that encouraged small, local banks until recently (1980 iirc) and so before then there was a Cambrian explosion of banks (pardon the pun). Now banks are gradually consolidating, but they have nothing close to the oligopoly that you see in countries without that sort of history.

The big holdout in the USA was fuel pumps. For some reason they demanded and got all kinds of extra time to convert to chip cards instead of swipe.

> The big holdout in the USA was fuel pumps.

Was? Most of the ones I use are still magstripe-based ("remove your card quickly"). Only occasionally it says "leave card inserted" which is where (I assume) it's talking to the chip.

> Cards still have magstrips on them but I can't remember the last time one got used.

But the chips are relatively flaky and often don't work. At least here (California) after three failed chip communication attempts, the terminal allows a magstripe swipe instead as a backup. Happens quite often.