Once upon a time, Scott Christopher <sc@ottie.org> said:
Swipe-and-sign (and now just swipe for small amounts) is for Visa, Mastercard, Discover transactions (called credit)
Signatures are no longer required for chip card transactions in the US, except I think for transactions where the auth is done on the amount before an added tip (restaurants).
Skimming and card fraud is actually uncommon in the U.S. these days, and the police are very effective at combating it. It's just cheaper for the industry to eat fraud losses than to "upgrade" systems. The transition to chip-based cards was a debacle.
Skimming is still highly active at gas pumps, where chip support was pushed off (current requirement I believe is late 2020, but may be delayed again). The skimmers get more creative all the time; they're getting inside pumps (possibly with help of low-paid station attendants, but also because of poor physical security) and installing the skimmer hardware out of sight. The hardware has Bluetooth, so the bad guys just pull up and get gas and someone in the car can retrieve the data (from multiple pumps even). -- Chris Adams <cma@cmadams.net>