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The way credit cards work in the U.S. is incredibly behind how they work in every other developed nation. I studied abroad in New Zealand in 2004. Even back then, everything was chip-and-pin, with computerized machines at every merchant to take orders. I never had to hand my NZ bank card to a merchant, just insert it into an EFTPOS reader and enter my PIN. My American credit card needed a swipe, signature, and handover to the cashier, because unlike in the U.S, they actually checked signatures in NZ. Meanwhile, in the U.S, we just moved to chip cards 2 years ago, and just yesterday I had a POS reader reject it for "chip malfunction - swipe instead". The major merchants just stopped collecting signatures last month, though cashiers have been ignoring the signature for decades now. I blame the innovator's dilemma and first-mover disadvantage, like sanxiyn's comment mentions. The U.S. has a "good enough" system that everyone's adopted; it's not worth it to force everyone to adapt to a system that's a little better. Same goes for many other broken systems in the U.S. - electricity, measurement, public education, public transportation, health insurance, etc. |