People look at you funny for not knowing how a credit card has worked for the last 30+ years. Here chips got introduced mid-80's and all cards had chips circa early-90's.
Why did it take so long for credit card to feature chips in the US ? Because it took a while for CIA's in-q-tel to take over control of gemplus, the company who owned the smart card technology, which happened early 2000's. This is known as "l'affaire gemplus". Once they got control, the company HQ got moved to luxembourg tax haven and the R&D and tech moved to the US. A few years later in 2006 it merged with competitor axalto to form gemalto famous for making SIM cards and recently for their SIM crypto getting in NSA hands[1]. In 2009 french government tried to counter the takeover by becoming gemalto's major shareholder, but it was too late, CIA got what they were after as shown by in-q-tel selling its shares in 2010 which coincidentally was the years EMV credit card got introduced to the US.