[ewheeler]

Its not just desire to avoid spending the money to provide chip+pin systems

Most Americans have many credit cards, unlike consumers in Europe, for example, where chip+pin is the norm.

US banks and credit card companies worried that Americans wouldn't be able to remember 6 different PINs for 6 different cards. So, they prefer eating the overhead of fraudulent charges rather than potentially reducing the number of credit cards (and profit) each consumer uses