Comment by avianlyric

No the US stuck with signature for profit and cultural reasons. Europe also had a huge install of mag stripe equipment, and has the same fraud systems, what else do you think Europe was using before EMV was developed?

But Chip-and-PIN makes using credit cards marginally less convenient, and forces people to authenticate themselves to perform transactions, unlike swipes and signatures, something that many Americans don't like. The US is happy with crazy high fraud rates, and crazy high interchange rates (fees for using credit cards). Those interchange rates also fund all the fancy points and rewards programs in the US, and primarily are paid for by the poorest in society (who can't access those programs, but are still paying the interchange rates). Plus high interchange rates mean more money for banks and the card networks themselves.

The EU on the other hand capped interchange rates, so either banks had to get fraud under control, or pay for fraud out of their own pockets. I'll give you two guess which route they chose.