in the glorious lands across the ocean, chip cards of all kinds use a PIN instead of a signature, which makes way more sense anyway. Chip & sign is an American abomination.
In the US, the credit card security comes from the vantage of "it's quite literally.... not your money". If there are any failures in security, the bank pays, thus ease of use is of greatest concern to the consumer.
In the USA, its rare that you'd have to sign for anything under $20.
I think maybe this is a cultural thing. In Europe it seems people associate "credit" with "being in debt" which of course isn't (necessarily) true. It just means someone else is on the line until you reconcile, and this is the beauty of credit cards – they make it tremendously easy to safeguard your own money. Just make sure to pay off the bill at the end of the month and everything is solid.
Because of this, credit cards in Europe tend to not have the same great benefits you can find on cards in the US. AMEX is pretty good still, but there isn't exactly tons of competition in the credit card space here.
I have a credit card from Luxembourg that is somehow set up to ask for signature, even though it can do PIN just fine, and I really don't recommend this setting in Europe, it's a massive pain in the ass since most merchants aren't equipped to deal with that. You end up having to sign the merchant's receipt with a pen like you're back in 1970, it takes a lot more time than entering your PIN (or better yet, contactless without PIN these days).
(And I did complain to their customer service, but they won't change the setting).
Depends on the country, in many EU countries I find chip+sign payments to be way faster than chip+PIN. Every now and then you run into a cashier that gets confused by chip+sign, but not often enough to justify switching back to chip+PIN in my experience.
Is this something that only triggers above a certain threshold? On the east coast, whenever I go to the grocery store, its just insert chip and press ok. I've never had to sign or enter a pin.
This is called "expedited checkout". This is a merchant option to help speed up the checkout process. However the merchant is then taking all responsibility for fraudulent transactions.
No, everywhere else in the world (basically) it's chip-and-PIN. In the US, it seems to be chip-and-signature (which defeats one of the biggest benefits of chip cards).
When I was in Seattle at a restaurant trying to pay, the owner told me that they also couldn't accept tips if they used chip cards. I thought she was BSing me into paying cash but she tried to swipe the card instead so that I could.
It's amazing how, in the US, even the implementation of new technologies is broken and awful.
I love signature, because I play the credit card sign up game. Hard to remember PINs when you open a card a month.
Also because if my card gets stolen, I'm assured that my pin wasn't lifted by camera or keypad shim. The signature will be not present or not mine on fraudulent transactions, so I can tell my card issuer to fix it and not worry about them telling me I had "poor PIN security" or that it was somehow my fault.
Because credit card companies offer incentives to sign up for their cards. A lot of people here regularly carry a lot of debt on their cards, and the credit card companies know if they give those users more cards to juggle around their debt on, they can leach more money from them.
For financially responsible people, that means you can sometimes get a few freebees if you're willing to deal with the hassle.
I don't know what it's like in most other places, but debt is a weird part of culture here.
I'm British, and while some people have credit cards, most people I know don't. I have a bank debit card and I use the single card to pay for pretty much everything I don't pay for directly with cash. I have zero debt, because I always pay up front for everything.
I do get lots of junk mail for credit cards, have done for decades, so I could get one tomorrow if I desired. But I don't see any real value in doing so; why get into debt if you can avoid it.
I use a (n.b. singular, not multiple) credit card from AMEX for the benefits. (Particularly excellent travel insurance and car rental benefits.) I make sure to never spend more than I can pay off at the end of the month, so that I don't actually ever get into debt. My own money is resting nicely in a bank account until the credit card bill arrives.
I never spend my own money directly unless I have to (e.g. the merchant doesn't accept AMEX or only takes cash etc.) because should I end up with fraudulent transactions or lose my card or whatever it may be, I have actual cash to back it up.
If you're fiscally responsible and make sure to always pay off the bill at the end of the month (with all that money you didn't spend) then credit cards are pretty much nothing but benefit. There may be a yearly fee associated (my card has one) with it but I've found it to be worth it for the benefits alone, but I also rack up so many points that I can use those to pay for the fee.
in the glorious lands across the ocean, chip cards of all kinds use a PIN instead of a signature, which makes way more sense anyway. Chip & sign is an American abomination.