[the_af]

I was talking about brick & mortar shops.

Now I've done some reading, and it seems my country (in Latin America) is following US standards. It seems US-issued credit cards only require signatures, even when used abroad, and only recently (as far as I can google it) are they slowly starting to switch to either PIN or chip-based cards. Newly issued cards where I live have chips (this is a relatively recent development), which I'm not sure exactly how are supposed to be safer than magnetic strip cards, and also don't require PINs.