My understanding (I wasn't in the fraud department) was that the US historicaly had better connectivity (leased ISDN lines), and was doing fraud detection in th

My understanding (I wasn't in the fraud department) was that the US historicaly had better connectivity (leased ISDN lines), and was doing fraud detection in the 'cloud' (i.e. soft real-time). Most other countries had to rely on connectivity-free authorization and ISO 7816 was a better fit there (smartcards with onboard storage and authentication methods).