[lxgr]

The US still hasn't started using PINs for all credit and most debit transactions, and at this point it doesn't look like it ever will.

Apple and Google Pay are just as (if not more) secure anyway for the majority of transactions, and a long tail of US restaurants, hotels, corporate card issuers, rental car agencies etc. will simply never change their legacy flows. There are just too many incumbent stakeholders.

[jonathanlydall]

It’s a pity that US regulators can’t manage to mandate that the dinosaurs get with the times as fraud seems to me to be an enormous burden to US consumers.

Even if fraud victims get their money back, firstly it must be an admin headache and then merchants have to cover fraud losses/insurance costs and thus mark up all their prices to make sure they do, so everyone is subsidising the fraudsters.

I presume it’s lobbying that would/does thwart any attempts at any such regulation.

As someone outside of the US I would like to be able to largely ignore this problem as just affecting people over there, but unfortunately it spills into the rest of the world.

When I last had fraud on my card it was through an online US merchant, because, like most US online merchants, they don’t use 3D secure. If they did then blocking the transaction for me would have been as simple as pressing the “it’s fraud” option when my phone would have received a “do you want to allow this transaction of $X for Y in the US?” that my bank’s 3D secure system normally sends to me.

Hopefully Apple and Google Pay will eventually help things over there.