AFAIK, there's two big problems in the US: * many places moved from offline magstripe authorisation to online chip-and-pin authorisation (while still often usi

AFAIK, there's two big problems in the US: * many places moved from offline magstripe authorisation to online chip-and-pin authorisation (while still often using card terminals that use dialup connections, and connect per transaction) * many US banks have really slow authorisation servers (for whatever reasons!); I remember some sales staff being really surprised at my card going through in about a second (and that verification probably involved a network roundtrip to the UK!)