More their risk than ours (Score 1)

Remember, if you have a VISA credit card and someone make unauthorized transactions you have 30 days to dispute the charges. If dispute the charges the loss is VISA and the merchant's loss, not yours. (With Debit cards, however, you only have about 10 days to challenge the charge and are therefore a much higher risk to consumers.) Also, the problem with swiping cards is the wear and tear on the card. For example, I've had my VISA for about 10 months, but the signature field is already pretty much illegible. This makes it impossible for a merchant to verify your sig without asking for a second ID...something that rarely happens in most places. This sounds pretty secure...especially since VISA taking the big financial risk. Obviously, they're going to try to recoop most of this cost by getting merchants to fork out $$$ for new hardware.