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Visa Claims Chip Cards Reduced Fraud By 70% (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Ars Technica:
Although only 59 percent of US storefronts have terminals that accept chip cards, fraud has dropped 70 percent from September 2015 to December 2017 for those retailers that have completed the chip upgrade, according to Visa.
There are a few ways to interpret those numbers. First, it seems like two years has resulted in staggeringly little progress in encouraging storefronts to shift from magnetic stripe to chip-embedded cards, given that in early 2016, 37 percent of US storefronts were able to process chip cards. On the other hand, fraud dropping 70 percent for retailers who install chip cards seems great. Chip-embedded cards aren't un-hackable, but they do make it harder to steal card numbers en masse as we saw in the Target's 2013 breach.
There are a few ways to interpret those numbers. First, it seems like two years has resulted in staggeringly little progress in encouraging storefronts to shift from magnetic stripe to chip-embedded cards, given that in early 2016, 37 percent of US storefronts were able to process chip cards. On the other hand, fraud dropping 70 percent for retailers who install chip cards seems great. Chip-embedded cards aren't un-hackable, but they do make it harder to steal card numbers en masse as we saw in the Target's 2013 breach.
They aren't mandatory but they do charge higher fees to process the transaction if you don't use the chip. Online card purchases still act like swipe cards since all you have is the basic info so it's not like they can just force all transactions to work like using the chip.
In the US typically it is chip only, no PIN. Plus the card could have just been swiped. As pointed out in the article, 41% of storefronts don't have chipreaders.