Most of the world has fully migrated, or is in the process of migrating to EMV Chip and PIN technology for debit and credit payments, according to EMVCo. At 4Q 2011 45% of cards were EMV compliant and 76% of terminals - see table.

Global Coverage - Amex, JCB, MasterCard, Visa - 4Q 2011

Source & Copyright©2012 -  EMVCo.

The USA has lagged way behind in adopting Chip and PIN. All of this changed on August 9, 2011 when Visa announced plans to speed up chip migration and adoption of mobile payments in the United States, with a three-part plan:

1. expand the technology innovation programme to merchants in the U.S.A.
2. build processing infrastructure for Chip acceptance and requiring US processors to be able to accept the technology by April 2013
3. establish a counterfeit fraud liability shift to the merchants that have not upgraded by October 2015.

Earlier this year, MasterCard and Discover fell in line and have now been joined by American Express, which will begin issuing EMV-compliant cards in the latter half of this year. Like its rivals, the company has stressed the rising popularity of contactless and mobile payments as well as security as key reasons behind the switch.

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You have been warned: Chip and PIN really is coming to the USA and your US merchants will need to be able to accept Chip and PIN technology by October 2015 to avoid being liable for counterfeit fraud. The other thing to keep in mind are that POS fraud will migrate from the US to the other countries that do not have Chip and PIN, and to Card Not Present fraud.