> Do you mean that credit cards in other countries don't have magnetic stripes, or just that nobody uses them?

I don't know about other countries, but a few days ago I got a new Visa card in France. It still has the magnetic stripe. I'm not sure if I've ever seen it used here, but a few years ago I think they were still in use in German gas stations (at least).

Some banks have a nice feature where they allow you to disable the magnetic strip of the card. I presume the information is still physically on the card, but they can somehow know that the payment was done that way and decline it.