> Paypal - like Apple Pay & Google Pay - require you to authenticate into your account, which takes away the "wasn't me" deniability (if you pay _with paypal_ as opposed to "via paypal, with credit card").

Yeah, but most Americans who frequently deal with foreign expenses don’t want to pay with PayPal for them, since they are much more expensive for currency conversion than the traveler-focused US credit cards, don’t give the same legal protections to the cardholder in case of merchant misbehavior or data breach, don’t get covered by cardholder benefits like insurance, and don’t give reward points like the good US cards.

> It's funny you bring up tourists - because these are exactly the people who had to get cards with PIN (when their banks didn't offer them), or risk being unable to use them in Europe. So the fact that they "want to" doesn't mean that the merchants do, in fact, bend over backwards to allow them - it was the US tourists that had to adapt. So it's possible!

My life is a living counterexample to what you say is necessary for US tourists in Europe. I’ve been living in Germany for over 2 years now on various short-term immigration statuses (and yes legally despite the total duration). The main way I pay for most non-invoiced expenses both online and in person is a US-issued credit card with no PIN, only frictionless-flow 3-D Secure (no life customer option), and no foreign transaction or currency conversion fee. It works fine in pretty much every case I’ve encountered in Germany where cards are accepted at all, aside from sometimes having to sign. I do pay certain expenses by SEPA bank transfer or direct debit, but mostly medical or government expenses, rent, and certain peer to peer payments.

Cards with no tap to pay and no chip are a problem in Europe, but both of those are widely available in the US now.

> I know the situation in US, I don't believe it's a problem of "cost" or "widespread use" (e.g. haven't heard about beggars taking credit card in the US - the card usage is far more widespread in Europe).

You’re overgeneralizing about Europe and misgeneralizing about the US. Here in Germany, international cards like Visa and Mastercard were not that widely accepted before the COVID-19 pandemic, and even now most Germans don’t hold an actual credit card.

Beggars certainly don’t tend to take cards in Germany, though maybe they do in some of the most cashless European countries. In the US, sure beggars don’t typically take cards there either, although I’ve heard of isolated examples of it happening.

Looking overall rather than at atypical subsets like beggars, cards are indeed far more widely held in the US than in Europe, especially true credit cards but also the international type of debit card with a Visa (not Electron) or Mastercard (not Maestro) logo that can be used as if it were a credit card.

If you check statistics, be sure to look up statistics on how widely cards are held (and which types), not how widely cash is used. Many US people frequently use both cards and cash.

> Card fraud is not curbed in the US because there's no political will to do it, not because it's not possible or it's too expensive.

Why is there no political will to do it? Yes, it’s too expensive, a little bit for the merchants but especially for the banks. US merchants simply charge high enough prices to cover high credit card processing fees that let the banks eat the fraud (and/or pay rewards to their good customers). Customers don’t mind because they’re quite strongly legally protected, and the customers who don’t benefit from credit card rewards don’t feel ripped off because the relevant portion of the merchant cost structure is built into the listed prices. Nobody with sufficient influence and awareness of the situation has an incentive to change the system.

Even tap to pay was hard to get adopted in the US. Most initial attempts failed and were removed by the banks. It only became common once some major public transit systems started accepted it, and helped along by how the typical chip readers in use in the US at first were annoyingly slow.

> If there was a PSD2-equivalent law, all banks would quickly implement it and y'all would wonder why this wasn't done sooner.

If there were a PSD2-equivalent law, it would have a long transition period, banks or merchants would probably sue over it, there might be delays, and it might get watered down or repealed.

But yes, if the banks and merchants do go along with it, a law like that would be necessary to prevent competitive disadvantage as compared to the banks and merchants that wouldn’t voluntarily choose to do it.