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Virtually every country other than the United States uses a cryptographic NFC and/or chip and pin system for in-person credit/debit transactions.

In most countries, the card number is only used for online and phone transactions. There's probably no way to do better than this without abandoning cards entirely in favor of some kind of device (or app) that has enough of a user interface to do a human-readable challenge response.



Practically all online VISA/MC card transactions at domestic online stores here in Finland are verified by 2-factor authentication using bank credentials (3dsecure etc.), it has been this way for over 10 years now.


the us has had nfc and chip for years. we still support swiping too. your statement was true for a few short years when europe did chip first. which was much easier there, since credit cards were not as common, and didn't exist since 1950 like in america.

we don't use a pin, because that doesn't help with fraud. most fraud is either online, or someone at the store, who can easily skim or see your pin. online you can use 3dsecure, which has a pin.

processing a transaction doesn't mean your money's gone. you can dispute any fraud charge for 2 months. so the pin doesn't do anything. and for bank accounts, where it's debit, and your cash is immediately taken out, we've had a pin since before europe had an atm card.


The USA is still rolling out chip support, with a date of 1 October for the remaining holdouts to use it.

The rest of the world reached that point around 15 years ago, including countries with high credit card use (UK, France) and high debit card use (Northern Europe).


Technically true, yet POS support for chip transactions is still a bit less widespread, no?


In my small town I use only NFC via my watch, phone or tapping my card. If every place accepts NFC payments in this little town I would assume it's more widespread than you think.

I think it's just not widely known about/common usage in the US even though the infrastructure seems to be widely there.


In US, with over 270,000 reports, credit card fraud was the most common type of identity theft last year and more than doubled from 2017 to 2019.


Credit card fraud, as in transaction fraud, usually online. It's a lot less common for your physical card to be the issue in a fraud situation, so improving security there is moot




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