> How/why has it taken so long for the US to catch up? A significant part of this is differences in credit card usage patterns. It's fairly common in the US f

> How/why has it taken so long for the US to catch up? A significant part of this is differences in credit card usage patterns. It's fairly common in the US for people to have a large number of credit cards (think ~10), not least because various stores have their own cards which get you discounts. From what I can tell, other places people have a much smaller number of cards. If a person has 10 cards, and each of those card issuers wants their card to actually be used, the game theory is against them making the person try to remember a PIN to use their card. Even if you posit that they can solve the coordination problem and all agree that they will simul-roll-out a requirement to use a PIN (which is not trivial at all, given lack of widespread support in terminals), they all worry that with 10 PINs to remember the cardholder will just say "screw it" and stick to using only one or two cards, and it won't be theirs. Yes, the cardholder can go through the trouble of changing PINs so they all match. But then you have to gamble on them doing that... So that's one reason issuers haven't been pushing very hard for chip+PIN.