This gets thrown a lot but I think the reason the U.S. didn't move from the swipe system to the PIN is the speed of processing your card. With the swipe, the cashier just swipe your card and you're done. With the chip, I have to wait and then enter my PIN and then wait. It's just a hustle.
This process is nearly instant in every country I have used it in except for the US, where it inexplicably takes 20 seconds of waiting both pre and post pin entry.
For security reasons, contactless card payments are limited to small transactions and can only be used a certain number of times between chip and pin transactions.
Since it lacks a second authentication factor the compromise is to limit how much can be spent if the card is stolen.
The US could skip chip and pin if it switched directly to contactless mobile payments.
