My understanding is that almost every US [edit: EMV] card is [edit: going to be] chip and signature.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/credit-card-programs/1304271-...

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/lv?key=0Ani-u3tGk5hedGRv...

Edit: clarifying - what I meant was that the US EMV cards will be chip and sig, not chip and pin. Most US cards are obviously still mag stripe. I'm traveling to Europe later this year so I was looking into the CC issues, and as a US traveler not being able to get an EMV card with pin priority is annoying.

Edit 2: jvm, not sure what you meant to link to, but that link just goes to the Forbes splash advert.

I have three cards. Only my debit/credit card has a chip and there's no pin. I can press it against one of the few readers that support this (Walgreens, Subway) and it'll work. My other two cards don't even have this. Of course, if these guys are storing my card in a non-encrypted way, its still the same issue as using swipe.

On the plus side Google Wallet works at Walgreens. I have yet to see any other brick and mortar support it. Paying for stuff with your smartphone is such a no-brainer. Shame Apple won't play ball with Google (or even put NFC in its phones) and Verizon is doing its own thing with ISIS and not allowing Google Wallet to be installed on any phones on its network. There's a lot of wrong here and its not just limited to credit card number theft.

If we have a more diversified way to pay for things it could limit the damage when one method is cracked but the others aren't. Sure Targets credit cards got stolen, but imagine if we were allowed to use Google Wallet. We'd be immune to it.

I think the card you have is RFID enabled. They've been around for a while, and have some weaknesses (replay attacks [1], notably), against the ID they broadcast when inside an EM field.

The newer cards have a microprocessor inside them, with exposed contacts about 10mm from the left edge. With chip + pin transactions, the pin "unlocks" the payment authorization [2].

[1] https://www.chicagofed.org/digital_assets/publications/econo...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_and_PIN

Only one of my cards is chip and sig, and I had to go out of my way to get it. It's not the default for all new cards, and certainly not for existing cards.

When my credit card expired recently I received a chip and sig replacement without requesting it. They're definitely starting to be offered by default.

The same thing happened to me.

This is wrong. The vast majority of cards are signature only. I have one chip and signature card and it's regarded as kind of a novelty.

Maybe they will be. As of now, I have never seen a card with a chip in person at all. In my entire life.

Try leaving the US?

All of my cards (Amex, visa, mc, discover) are sig-only.

I believe it is chip and signature... I got mine from Bank of America... no pin necessary when the chip is used (and it still has the magnetic strip for stores that don't have chip readers).

The roll out for chip and pin in Canada started the same, but within the last year, I've found mag only readers to be extremely rare.

Even travelling through a lot of small towns in rural areas I don't think I've run into a magstripe-only reader in the past couple years at least.

There was a period where it was a guessing game every time you paid for something whether it was magstripe or chip (some locations even had a chip-capable machine, but didn't have the service enabled with their payment processor, so you still used the magstripe...).

It's pretty consistent now.

cool, so only about 5 years after it was widespread/standard in Europe