A lot of it has to do with legacy POS support and a strong disinclination on the merchants part to upgrade. Terminals are costly and configuration non trivial.

A lot of it has to do with legacy POS support and a strong disinclination on the merchants part to upgrade. Terminals are costly and configuration non trivial. Plus a strong “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” culture and resistance to any change. Add to it a relatively weak consumer protection regulatory regime and you’ve got the US. I would say it’s not worse than most of the world though. Much of the world is rampant with fraud borne entirely by the consumer. For instance QR based bank transfers are popular in much of the world outside the western developed world. Fraud is insanely rampant but the ease and utility vs cash makes it acceptable. Transactions costs are near or actually zero and there’s no POS infrastructure. But people meticulously check their transactions because theft is so rampant. The banks and governments seem unconcerned though. As such I put the US somewhere in the midpoint globally for this space. There are some smaller economies with strong regulatory regimes that do better for sure. There are many more that do much worse. Obviously the goal is the better not the worse, but I think it’s cherry picking to lump the US into being the worst.