[tsetse-fly]

Is it not obvious? Why don't retail stores type in your credit card information instead of swiping it?

Chip and PIN doesn't seem to exist in the US so I'd imagine they're not targeting it immediately. I don't see why they couldn't expand the hardware to support it though.

[bumblebird]

AFAIK reading the chip is non trivial, and involves heavy encryption and proprietary hardware/software. Maybe though :/

[tsetse-fly]

Chip and PIN is a standard. They wouldn't have to reverse engineer it or implement from scratch.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_and_PIN

[bumblebird]

"This means that adding support for EMV to existing payment applications can be a daunting task!

Furthermore, the demands of providing an EMV solution do not even stop once all the necessary processing has been implemented, thanks to the extensive type approval process enforced by the governing body, EMVCo. Before any EMV-capable solution can be deployed, there are thousands of tests that need to be passed to validate that the implementation conforms to the EMV industry standard, and as the EMV specifications are regularly updated this becomes a major task in itself! This is why many businesses requiring an EMV "Chip & PIN" solution choose to license a purpose-built EMV software kernel rather than developing their own."

http://www.emvx.co.uk/emv_guide.aspx

idk, maybe they could license it from someone, but I wouldn't say it's a trivial thing to add.