"Chris Blunt" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 16 Aug 2011 17:10:36 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

Does anyone know why Citi does not make chip-and-pin cards available
to US-based customers? Their advertising in Asia and Europe (and
probably the rest of the world) show that chip-and-pin is offered
there, so they clearly have the physical ability to create them. When
I asked in the US, some Citi employees did not even know that these
existed, and none offered any hope.

Probably because it's no use individual credit card issuers acting
alone. It needs the whole industry in each country to agree to issue
chip-and-pin cards and for merchants and card acquirers all to be set
up to accept them.

This is what happened in the UK several years ago. Everybody's cards
were switched to chip-and-pin over a period of a couple of years.
During that time merchants were issued with machines capable of
handling them and staff were trained how to use them. Credit card
holders also need to be told what changes are happening and given
information to make sure they are issued with PINs and know how to use
their cards with the new system.

It requires a coordinated effort on the part of the entire industry to
make all that work smoothly.

Chris

I'm surprised they haven't got chip cards. Couple of factors:

1. In Australia, credit card fraud is paid for by the Bank. The use of chip
cards reduces fraud, so it reduces costs to the Bank. It has very little
consumer benefit; Australian consumers don't pay for fraudulent
transactions. (In fairness, this is also true in the US, or at least was
when I was living there).

2. The terminal POS equipment is provided by the Bank. There are thousands
of banks in the US, lot more of a problem than getting four or five to agree
on common POS infrastructure.

3. Current chip cards are already superseded. Contactless (wave and pay)
systems using NFD technology will quickly replace them. The "killer app" is
putting the credit card logic into a mobile phone app, such that the
person's phone becomes the payment device, eliminating physical credit cards
entirely. The Banks in Australia may have been better off skipping current
smart cards and jumping straight to RFID/NFD based technology. Maybe that is
what they are planning in the US.