Possibly something like Parkinson's disease. Or maybe even something that prevents you from memorizing the PIN, like dementia.

If you have a card that supports Android or Apple Pay you can add it to that and try tapping with your phone. It's supposed to say on the screen that NFC's accepted if it is but a lot of such places don't for some reason.

Just for cards issued by Australian banks. Chip and signature cards from other countries still work there.

They're supposed to accept cards requiring signatures regardless of where the card's from. The disability requirement is to get such a card issued by a UK bank. Oh, and the Visa/MC rules also say that ticket machines, etc. are supposed to accept cards that don't a PIN. (Self-checkouts are considered "attended" so the person watching them still needs to get a signature.)

Yep, CurrentC. Which is basically a usability and security/privacy disaster. It'll probably fail (and some retailers such as Best Buy already have abandoned it), but there will still be holdouts.

A large number of US retailers actually rely on non-consensual tracking/data mining as part of their business models. NFC would really interfere with that. Not to mention there are a few (like Walmart) who really hate Visa/MC and at best want all of the benefits card acceptance brings without paying anything.

It's because we have the best banking system money can buy (aka the banks want to spend as little money as possible). That's why PIN's not being bothered with, even though retailers basically have to buy terminals that support it anyway.

Unfortunately a lot of retailers bet wrongly that Visa and MasterCard would change their minds and now everyone's rushing.

It's a rationalization made by some in the media. While it might have a bit of basis in fact, the real reason is that banks don't really consider PIN a worthwhile investment of time or money.

Considering that Visa and MasterCard regulations (and the UK's own laws) require that merchants still accept signatures, I don't see that going too well.

We're getting every other part of the EMV system, just not the PIN part. That is a far cry from your characterization of chip and signature as a "different form of magstripe".

Other than the unique one time code that's generated for every chip transaction, of course. And the extreme difficulty of retrieving the private encryption keys needed to generate those codes from the chip itself.

Debit cards will ask for a PIN but only at places that have already accepted debit. And it's still optional, just like magstripe. Too bad I don't see that changing any time soon; might as well just never ask for a PIN on debit as well except for cash back if it's not going to be made mandatory.

Walmart's been doing it for a while, actually. Close to a year at this point.

Re: Dollar General--I'll see if I can confirm whether any other of their stores have support turned on (none in my area) and if so, add them to the site in my signature. Do you know if they have NFC turned on as well?

US chipped (credit) cards generally don't have a PIN, or it's prioritized so low that it's never going to be used domestically. OP is likely referring to having to keep the card in the slot for multiple seconds vs. being able to put it away immediately after swiping.