It is much easier to steal billions of dollars virtually than in cash.largely cash-free economy has cut costs and reduced crime rate
The push for chipped cards started in the earlier 1990s. Two things detered its adoption in the US:
1) low crime rate and better / lower cost technology: the chipped cards were a way to instantly authenticate a card at the time of sale, without making a call to the processing bank. This allows the transaction to be processed in batch at end of the day, as real time phone calls were expensive in Europe. Many of the POS terminals in the US were moved to authentication via IP network so it was low cost / real time practically.
2) cost of new terminals, multiplied by their sheer number.