This is a great move to help reduce fraud for their US merchants, but even more important is it expands their potential market. Adding a chip reader opens up the rest of the world.<p>However, I'm still not sure how they will handle the PIN part of Chip and PIN, as the usual requirement is that the PIN is entered on a dedicated Pin Entry Device which then only presents the unlocked smart card to the merchant register.
As a british immigrant to North America, I couldn't believe how far behind in this regard the States and Canada were. Canada has since caught up, but the US is only now getting there.<p>Anecdotal story: the only time my credit card has been defrauded is after a 3 day stay in the USA
I wonder what their plans are for NFC / PayPass / PayWave? Are there technological barriers to it? Could a NFC enabled Smartphone act as a payment terminal?<p>It's only on rare occasions now that I have to even put in a pin (in Australia), NFC style payment terminals are pretty much ubiquitous.<p>NFC payments in 80-90% of stores, many parking machines, >50% of vending machines.
A couple of data points:<p>American Express sent me a new card—unprovoked—about two months ago that is chipped. As mentioned elsewhere, it is a chip and signature card (as opposed to a chip and pin). I'm nothing particularly special as a credit card user so, if I received a card, seems the roll out has already well underway.<p>Another point is, as mentioned elsewhere, PayPal already offers a chip and pin compatible bluetooth device in a few countries marketed as part of their PayPal Here brand[0].<p>[0] - <a href="https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/how-to-use-paypal-here" rel="nofollow">https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/how-to-use-paypal-here</a>
It looks like they're not able to power strictly off the audio jack anymore with this tech. The product brief indicates that it uses a MicroUSB charging connector. I wonder how many transactions a single charge can handle.
Can't imagine not using these ... the only problem is the cards are weaker and the chip starts to come out.<p>(Only if you don't use a wallet)...
After reading the wikipedia article on this, these cards seems to be full of fallback mechanisms that make them virtually useless for more advanced protection but in only a few constrained situations, and it's biggest benefit is that it allows MasterCard and the others to shift liability of fraud from the Bank to the merchant and the customer.