Is New ‘Chip-And-Sign’ Credit Card Safer?

Dave Dahl -- Illinois Radio Network

The best credit card you can get is not the best available, in the opinion of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, whose president and CEO says the U.S. is behind.

The “chip-and sign” card has an embedded chip as its only security element, but anything you swipe still leaves you exposed, he says.

“Those mag stripes create a significant security risk for all US consumers,” says Rob Karr, “which is why we don't understand why banks don't just go to the (more sophisticated) 'chip-and-pin.'” Those cards, Karr says, are used in practically every other major industrialized country in the world, but, inexplicably, not the U.S. The requirement that you punch in a four-digit PIN is a second, separate security measure.

Karr's constituents have a dog in this fight. Starting Thursday, if they don't upgrade, stores will be more responsible when there's fraud against you.