I wonder if these kind of initiatives slow the adoption of chip and pin credit cards in the US. If Amazon is willing to lower the fees for swipes, pin entered transactions could be even lower.
I think that one of the problems for chip and pin adoption in the US is that there isn't a compelling reason for US consumers to desire it.
Credit card fraud might be a pain-point for merchants, but it simply is not for consumers. On the rare occasion that somebody makes a fraudulent purchase on my credit card, my credit card company flags the transaction. In the exceptionally rare case that this fails, I just call my credit card company and tell them that the transaction was fraudulent. Takes no more than 5 minutes, and I can count the number of times I've had to do it in the past 10 years on one hand.
Why then would I want the hassle of punching in a PIN? I'm a consumer, not a merchant. I don't care about what benefits the merchant gets out of it.
Credit card fraud might be a pain-point for merchants, but it simply is not for consumers. On the rare occasion that somebody makes a fraudulent purchase on my credit card, my credit card company flags the transaction. In the exceptionally rare case that this fails, I just call my credit card company and tell them that the transaction was fraudulent. Takes no more than 5 minutes, and I can count the number of times I've had to do it in the past 10 years on one hand.
Why then would I want the hassle of punching in a PIN? I'm a consumer, not a merchant. I don't care about what benefits the merchant gets out of it.