Comment by hyperman1

I'm comparing the US credit card system with the chip+pin system common in my country.

* As you need both the card and the code, and as cards are almost impossible to clone, card fraud and identity theft are almost nonexistent.

* Plenty of online shops allow me to buy something without creating an account or providing a billing address.

* As the whole thing runs on debet instead of credit, nobody cares about credit scores.

* A common complaint from merchants is that the system is expensive. My paper merchant recently grumbled he paid around €4000/year. I don't know if this is normal or how much the credit card system costs for a merchant, but substracting these amounts would provide an upper bound to the preferrable amount of fraud.

So while kalzumeus might be right, I believe the system he describes/is used to allows a lot more fraud than required.