AFAIK chip and pin shifts liability for fraud onto the credit customer. While banks may be more than eager to do so, they may also be wary of a customer backlash over this.
In the UK the law remains what it always was - the customer is not liable unless they enabled the fraud. (I'm right now in the process of getting my card replaced after fraudulent charges that I can only assume were put through as though they were chip and pin). In the early days there was a concern that the courts would believe that chip and pin proved the customer was responsible (i.e. that the mere fact of a successful transaction with chip and pin technology necessarily proved the customer had told the fraudster their pin), but it seems fair to say the reality of chip and pin fraud has set in now.
> In the early days there was a concern that the courts would believe that chip and pin proved the customer was responsible (i.e. that the mere fact of a successful transaction with chip and pin technology necessarily proved the customer had told the fraudster their pin), but it seems fair to say the reality of chip and pin fraud has set in now.
This actually was true across Europe for the first few years when EMV chips were rolled out. It took some time before they passed a law which absolved customers of liability for fraud processed as EMV transactions.
There are well-documented cases where liability had been shifted to the customer, and which was only reversed through there being evidence that is not normally available in these cases:
"In one disputed transaction case we assisted in, the customer had his card stolen while on holiday, and then used in an EMV transaction. The issuer refused to refund this customer on the basis that their records showed the PIN was used. Luckily, the customer managed to obtain the merchant receipts, and these contained the TVR. This indicated that the PIN was not used, and the merchant opted to fall back to signature. We decoded the TVR and informed the customer, who was then able to get a refund.
Other customers are less fortunate: it is unusual for the TVR to be included on the receipt, and often the merchant receipt has been destroyed by the time the dispute is being considered."
The law may always have been that the customer is not liable unless they enabled the fraud, but I hope the rules of evidence and/or practices of dispute resolution have changed so that the infallibility of the system is no longer tacitly assumed.
