The article is lite on specifics, but my Canadian chip card will normally reject stripe transactions in Canada (or it did the last time I saw a stripe machine,

The article is lite on specifics, but my Canadian chip card will normally reject stripe transactions in Canada (or it did the last time I saw a stripe machine, several years ago), but happily perform them when I cross into the US. So one possibility is that they're stealing magstripe data off the chips for cloning and use in the US banking system.