I’m in the US, and all of my cards have the numbers on the back now, and they’re not raised. I’m pretty sure we transitioned to chip and pin like a decade ago.
The transition to contactless (where you tap your card or phone instead of inserting the card) took so long in the USA though. It only really became popular during COVID and with Apple Pay. Home Depot finally enabled contactless payments recently. In Australia, we were using contactless payment 15 years ago!
US banking is behind in a few other ways too. Apps like Venmo and Zelle just don’t exist in some other countries since you can easily do an instant transfer through your bank to anyone else for free. Some US banks still use SMS for two factor auth, which is insecure.
The US uses chip and signature, no joke, because the banks didn’t think people could remember another PIN.
Even though the you already have to use the PIN at an ATM.
No idea why there’s such a big functional difference between “credit” and “debit” cards.
I don’t think there is in terms of process, I think payment handlers just add a higher charge for processing credit card payments, which is why stingy retailers dislike them.
I’m happy to be corrected though.
