Sadly, it's much easier to just pay with Apple Pay on the iPhone.
Don't misunderstand, chip & pin is something the US has long since needed. But the chips are unreliable and entering a pin on some terminals is annoying. A phone with NFC might be easier than that, just fingerprint to unlock, and then press a single button on the phone.
OTOH, NFC credit cards are now also becoming more common in europe too, i.e. https://www.visa.co.uk/products/visa-contactless/ http://www.mastercard.com/contactless/
[0] EDIT: it might have happened and I can't remember it, which is effectively the same thing in context.
But I do use my card(s) a great deal. So much so that the contacts on the chip are changing from gold to brown.
I've never had a problem with a card reader not properly reading swipes or the magnetic strip wearing down. Only times I've had a swipe fail has been when I mis-swiped the card, and that's entirely on my own klutziness, not any kind of mechanical failure.
The future shouldn't be worse than the present, but it looks like that's the road we're going down...
Although it seems less common over the last several years (perhaps because now physical cards are often replaced several times before they nominally expire?), this used to be a serious problem. The most common fix for a read failure was to put the card inside a plastic grocery bag, pull the bag tight, and then reswipe it. I have no idea how this fixed anything, but I witnessed it working many times.
My mum is a cachier. It is a constant headache where she works. Some tills the staff avoid using until last because the reader sucks so bad.
But, to you, C&P is an infallible technology that doesn't comfort to our normal rules of physics, so I'm sure nothing will convince you.
Contactless cards were introduced relatively recently, where you just tap and go - no verification required (as such there's a limit on the amount you can pay using contactless). These are very speedy, I think more so than Apple pay, and are becoming increasingly popular.
In London (and possibly other places in the UK, I'm unsure) they have actually integrated contactless card readers into public transport, meaning you can hop on a bus/tube and pay for the journey with your card. Essentially, you can carry around a single card to commute, buy your lunch, go shopping and everything else.
I already carry around my driver's license. I already carry around the access card to my school. I already carry around my student ID. I already carry around 3 different library cards. I already carry around my public transport card. I already carry around my debit card. I already carry around cash.
Even if you remove a few of those I still need to carry my wallet with me, so what difference does it make? I mean, other than the loss of separation of identities that comes with the territory. It's fine that my public transport card has low security, because you can't cash it out easily, and it only carries a very limited value anyway. Neither of those apply to my debit card.
Actually there's likely more incentive to pickpocket a wallet for its cash contents, rather than the contactless card(s), given in a lot of wallets this will be both greater and, by definition of course, easier to cash out on! So it seems like carrying contactless cards doesn't add any particular incentive for theft above what has existed forever with carrying cash. Also, any other security vulnerabilities with the debit card, unrelated to contactless, still exist exactly as they do today.
So, it seems to me that merging cards, i.e. adding contactless and the ability to use it for transport, and other things, seems to just add marginal convenience with essentially no added risk of theft or fraud[1]. So yes, it's not a life-changing technology and it won't mean you no longer have to carry a wallet, but it represents a small win and certainly a step improvement for everyday convenience, so that's good right? I for one simply think the fewer cards I have to carry, the better, to be honest.
[1] though I have, to be fair, heard about the issue of thieves 'skimming' contactless cards in people's pockets, I don't know if that was always just a scare story or if it's actually a real exploitable vulnerability - but this seems likely to be a pretty far-flung edge case anyway.
Chip & PIN is not coming to the US. Chip & sign, yes, but no PINs.
But back when we used mag stripes, I used to see failures all the time.
The anecdata in my life says chip&pin is FAR more reliable.
I have however worn out a card that has been in use for a couple of years.
I would beg to differ that the chips are unreliable. Other solutions might be easier, don't know about that though.
I used my apple watch to pay in about 90% of transactions, including parking meters!
Almost all merchants support "Visa PayWave" (aka NFC) so moving my wrist up to the terminal to pay was a fun talking point.
Not one checkout clerk had seen the apple watch used before, because the Aussie banks haven't reached an agreement with Apple yet.
Meanwhile in the states, some idiot retailers actually shut off their NFC readers because they didn't want to support Apple Pay.
I like the idea of Apple Pay. It's not accepted at enough places yet to make it really worthwhile, but I could see contactless payments being a big thing in the future.
We have a VERY large network of point-of-sale registers, all built around the old swipe-to-pay (often requiring signature) credit card model. Replacing practically every POS register in the country is not a simple task; we're rolling out "chipped cards" and new registers to support them (that's a lot of effort & money), but doing so will take most of a year.
That's why Apple Pay is such a big deal, and why the fuss about large businesses trying to roll out their own specialized (and usually inferior) version: yes we're starting to move to chipped cards, but even those are proving slow to use in many/most areas; most of the new registers also support NFC, making Apple Pay's "double tap a button and wave your watch/phone nearby" desirable - IF the store turns on the NFC & infrastructure.
Alas, Walmart is trying to avoid Apple's fees by putting support into their own app, which will be annoyingly slow.
Yeah, well, I'm in Canada and we had about the same thing, yet in the last 5 or so years we've seen 2 major changes (chip and pin followed by tap to pay) and most business have kept up, I haven't used the swipe in 3 or 4 years and the tap I'm now able to use tap at most places.
Is there a problem with adoption in the US for some reason that doesn't exist in other places? Perhaps Interac has some special power here or something.
Credit card: 1. Enter phone number (for loyalty card lookup) 2. Select "credit card" 3. Swipe card 4. Answer question about making a donation 5. Confirm credit amount 6. Sign 7. Confirm (This is from memory, but it is roughly correct - I actually fear I may have forgotten a step or two)
Apple Pay: 1. Enter phone number (for loyalty card lookup) 2. Wake iPhone and bring near POS terminal 3. Place finger on home button until it buzzes (~1 second)
The flow for Apple Pay could be a little longer if you need to select a different card, but it is still both far faster and far simpler than the regular credit card flow.