UNTRUE: Chase Scraps Plans To Offer Chip + PIN Cards

Important update: I’ve just spoken to the Chase media team and they’ve stated that they are still planning on offering chip + PIN cards and that the WSJ was inaccurate.

Back in February of 2014 Chase CEO, Eileen Serra announced at a Chase investor conference that they would be offering chip + PIN cards “sometime in 2014”. Chase never met that deadline, even though the majority of their cards are now chip + signature.

It now looks like they have scrapped this plan altogether according to a recent article by the Wall Street Journal.

J.P. Morgan Chase, the nation’s biggest card issuer, had initially planned to issue chip-and-PIN credit cards in 2014, but the bank put those plans on hold after testing them with consumers, according to a person familiar with the bank’s strategy. The bank has issued millions of chip-and-signature cards.

This is an important issue, especially for those who travel as more and more countries go to chip + PIN only, technically you can still sign if you don’t live in those countries but that can be extremely difficult to explain – especially when you can’t speak the local language.

There is also the issue of not being able to use chip + signature cards in a lot of unmanned kiosks and terminals. None of these will accept a signature which means that U.S consumers can be stuck in lengthy queues or left not being able to use essential services such as public transport overseas.

I really don’t understand this move by Chase, it seems card issuers are worried that offering a PIN enabled card will reduce use as cardholders might forget their PIN or find it too inconvenient. Chip + PIN is the superior technology and will reduce fraud rates, which is why President Obama signed the BuySecure executive order which mandates that all government issued credit, debit and card readers must be enabled with with EMV chip and functionality.

If you have a Chase card that doesn’t have a chip, you might be able to request one. Click here for a full list of the cards that can be upgraded to an EMV chip version.

I’ve contacted Chase for an official comment and will update this post when I hear back from them.