But then what's the point? The whole signature scheme is not making much sense anyway, and pretending that no change is better because it is cheaper just gives you technical debt in the long run.
Would probably be better if at some point it was decided that using a signature is stupid and a deadline for using a PIN was set. But then again, the US hasn't been able to fix the date naming scheme, the measurement system or the temperature system (and it's just 4% of the world that is still using the old ones). I doubt this will ever be fixed.
Good question. The great credit card debacle that was that Target breakin was the force that finally pushed the US to have chips put in their cards, but the truth has always been that credit card companies would much rather spread the cost of fraud over interest rates and bank fees than actually mitigate it, after all a transaction is a transaction and if they can keep most of their fees its a win right?
I was in one of those fancy investment seminars and was seated next to a guy who either was or worked with the Chief Security Officer (CSO) of a big credit card issuer. I had asked how a credit card could justify charging 15 - 30% interest when the fed rate was below 2%. He explained that all of the fraud is covered by the fees and interest. They tune their systems to return the most money per dollar transacted and it is simpler to raise the interest rate across their base by 3% to cover any fraud obligations because they still make the money on the base transaction fee. While more complex security would cut their fraud losses it would also cut their earnings because it would reduce the overall transaction rate and the total number of dollars they process through a transaction.
Think about it this way, someone buys a $500 TV with a stolen or fraudulent CC. The CC company gets $10 from the company selling the TV (2% transaction charge) and covers the $500 "loss" out of interest payments above the cost of borrowing by other customers. End of the day they get their $10 and lose no money. What's not to like? Nobody will regulate them so that they cannot cover their "loss" of $500 by raising interest rates, and they still get their 2%.
It is a pretty classic case that their interests aren't really aligned with those of consumers.
What you describe matches my understanding perfectly.
Even if you leave finance charges out of it and are discussing debit cards - the interchange revenue is way more than enough to cover fraud liabilities. Throw in account fees, and you've got yourself a profitable product.
I was working at a small bank during ye old Target/Heartland breach years, and the only time I heard dissatisfaction expressed at the security status quo was when the breaches forced large-scale card reissuances. General fraud scaled proportionally with transaction volume, and was easy to deal with. Mass-reissuance didn't.
> the US hasn't been able to fix the date naming scheme, the measurement system or the temperature system
That's exactly equivalent to proclaiming that the three dozen major languages still used in Europe should all be abolished, except for English. More than half of all Europeans share no common language. The most widely understood language in the EU, English, only has about 1/2 coverage.
Language is far more important than measurement, and it should be standardized just the same as measurement.
Now see what kind of response you get when you tell the Swedish, Germans, Greeks, Romanians, French, Hungarians, Italians, Dutch, etc. that they all have to abandon their languages for superior efficiency of communication.
Finnish, Lithuanian and Danish are a mere 1% of the EU language base. Estonian is less than 1%. Globally it's that much worse. Why are they persisted generation after generation? It's wildly inefficient and backwards to force them upon children. Where are the widespread calls for abolishing them in favor of English as the primary language, in the name of gaining efficiency?
Possibly because in a lot of Europe most people learn their native language AND english, and this isn't that much more difficult.
Plus, langauge preserves a culture (literature, etc), which isn't really the same as measurement systems. I wish the UK (where I live) would hurry up and ditch it's remaining imperial units (e.g. miles). It would make life easier.
Actually the measurement system can sort of encode cultrual knowledge. For example, in the imperial system, a fluid ounce of butter weighs one ounce, so a pint of butter weighs a pound. :^)
It's no more difficult to learn two measurement systems, as it is to learn two languages. I'd argue it's dramatically easier to learn two measurement systems.
To learn the metric system, how many concepts do you need to memorize? Not many, it's quite easy. Now try learning Estonian or Russian as a native English or Mandarin speaker. People spend years of effort just to become mediocre at speaking Mandardin as an example.
Now consider, you're born in Finland, and few other people globally or in the EU use Finnish. To communicate well with other foreigners (the other seven billion people), you need a common language (typically English in Finland). The effort involved in learning English at even a moderate proficiency, means you're going to practice and use English for perhaps six to ten years growing up to just become decent at it. Then it further requires that you use it on an on-going / never-ending basis to stay proficient at it. That's because language is radically more complex and difficult than eg the metric system. That need to adopt and maintain a popular common language in addition to the scarce first/primary language, comes at a great time cost when added up across a lifetime.
By contrast, you can teach someone the metric system (someone entirely unfamiliar with it) in a very small amount of time.
More people in the US as a percentage know the metric system than know Finnish or Estonian in the EU.
The cultural explanation for languages, which is common, is no more valid than claiming culture for the imperial system clinging-on that you see in the US. In fact, that's precisely why it hasn't gone away in the US (otherwise it'd have been trivial to abandon). You can explain cultural concepts just as well in English and you can make subtle adoptions into English for phrases or cultural concepts as necessary, without needing to learn an entire other language.
In the US a tall person may be six feet six inches. That's an example of cultural embedding.
In the US, a fast car might go 180 or 200 miles per hour. The speed limit might be 70 miles per hour. That's embedded into the culture.
The three point line in basketball might be at 22 feet. That's culture. The pitchers mound is 60 feet six inches, that's culture.
A first down is ten yards, not 9.1 meters. That's culture. There are dozens of other common, equally valid examples from across US life.
If someone claims those things are not part of US culture (whereas an obscure language phrase is culture), they're simply guilty of arbitrary - and rather comical - snobbery.
Measurement systems affect culture but they are not culture in and of themselves. Countries have changed systems, but their cultures clearly have not. In fact I think the fact that many countries have switched demonstrates that it's not something cultural, rather one of practicality. There's a strong school of thought in the US that the government creating standards is "interferring" etc, that's possibly a reason why they haven't changed. Your argument reads that there's no need for change because it's cultural and easier just to keep things the way are. However if things were really like that, languages would have never evolved. People change, we get new ideas, and move on.
In every language you'll have phrases that relate to things from a long time ago, that doesn't mean they have a right to stay. The US has kept to the imperial system, which is your decision, but it's just few other people can understand your steadfastness.
In the UK we have phrases similar to what you mentioned regarding basketball rules, etc. They've stayed and quite rightly; also in russian and french we still have some of these words. But our general attitude to measurement systems has changed, for practical reasons, and quite rightly too.
In all fairness, languages are tied to national identity in a way that, say, date formats aren't.
But honestly the fact is that the various schemes mentioned aren't seen as problems by the vast percentage of Americans and transitioning to something else would be painful to various degrees. And where it's important/useful to have metric and Celsius measurement scales, they're mostly used.
Would probably be better if at some point it was decided that using a signature is stupid and a deadline for using a PIN was set. But then again, the US hasn't been able to fix the date naming scheme, the measurement system or the temperature system (and it's just 4% of the world that is still using the old ones). I doubt this will ever be fixed.