All of this started when the US decided to move to the chip standard—known in the industry as EMV. The US process was different from those of other countries, where governments instituted a mandate to upgrade everything by a certain date. The US implemented something called a “liability shift”—essentially, if retailers didn’t support chip card payments by buying a new, expensive machine, they’d be held accountable for any sort of fraud that occured in their store. Usually, that’s the bank’s responsibility. So, as long as retailers purchased the new chip-card reading terminals, liability would shift back to the bank.

http://qz.com/717876/the-chip-card-transition-in-the-us-has-been-a-disaster/