Hm, interesting. The place where I live, one is required to enter a PIN code when you buy something in the physical shop. Shops have terminals for that.
Unfortunately the personal security measures on credit cards are very poor in America - I remember even little things like having a persons picture on bank cards in Belgium was a huge step up compared to the cards here. Even online banking here is pretty bad - so many banks still only allow 4 digit pins (often with "safety measures" in place to restrict your options, like reusing numbers, or disallowing years - thus making the available pin pool significantly smaller), and for online banking the security options are often a joke too, such as low maximum character lengths, not allowing anything but a restricted set of characters and simply converting your password to lowercase.
I don't know if this is to keep things "convenient" to the consumer, but I never feel secure in the way my money is handled.
Are you in Europe (like me)? Chip and Pin credit cards are common here. But they are not common in USA. It causes no end of problems for American tourists who come here, since their cards don't work in many shops.
I don't know if this is to keep things "convenient" to the consumer, but I never feel secure in the way my money is handled.