# Chip and pin coming to North America- timeline



## FAST6191 (Feb 2, 2012)

Perhaps not our usual fare but having spent the winter in the colonies observing the practices of the natives with my default perspective being that of someone usually charged with working their way around security systems (my favourite recently (ish)- when booking some flights the bank authorisation on BA (although most good sites do such a thing) said OK when I went through it without javascript and enabled it at the last moment despite not doing the "first and third letter of phrase" routine) it caught my attention.

Equally I continued my jet set lifestyle with a trip to Europe (in this case the Netherlands) where it seems Visa was not accepted in that many places.... serves me right for not initially using/rocking up with enough cash I guess.

Anyhow http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/01/mastercard_visa/

http://www.mastercard.us/mchip-emv.html
http://www.nfcworld.com/2012/01/31/312857/mastercard-publishes-roadmap-for-moving-the-us-to-emv-and-nfc/

Personally although I do not like some of the attitudes banks and CC companies take with regards to who gets the blame I do find the continued reliance upon signatures somewhat baffling. Equally I should mention US banking practices (or maybe just the Washington state ones I spent most of my time observing things which is something of a special case it would seem) are somewhat different to European ones (for instance my personal account is free (business might cost a bit a few years down the line depending on your bank) without the need to have silly money in it, I have a marginal rate on small overdrafts, a bigger overdraft that will sting me, a free debit card/debit card usage, credit scores are not that important, credit cards are free and usually come with fair perks to the account they are tied to- considerably higher overdrafts, free or very cheap travel and other insurance and whatnot and cheques are all but gone).


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## prowler (Feb 2, 2012)

Oh wow, I thought America already had chip and pin.


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## FAST6191 (Feb 2, 2012)

There is a measure of chip and pin stuff already (although you often have to go out of your way to find it) but this is the shift away from magstripes and signatures as standard/viable to getting odd looks for trying.


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## Veho (Feb 2, 2012)

prowler_ said:


> Oh wow, I thought America already had chip and pin.



Me too, I'm surprised they didn't have it already.


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## xist (Feb 2, 2012)

Welcome to the future North America.....surprised you weren't there already.


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