doubleofive said:

So a salesman comes into my wife's shop a couple weeks ago trying to sell her a Chip-&-PIN Point of Sale system (she currently uses the Square add-on with her iPad). She declined, and when she asked me about it, I explained that its a much more secure credit card system that everyone but America uses, and like the metric system, it won't catch on because it's too different and I can't see credit card companies sending out all new cards to everyone, and besides, I've never seen one before.

Yesterday we get our new credit cards. They're Chip-&-PIN. No explanation of what that means, or what the little gold square is for. It's just "here's your new card, thanks for owing us money!"

My wife says "Apparently you were wrong about this being years off, huh?"

JEDIT: They might only be Chip-&-Signature, so face saved?

I actually had no experience with Chip-And-Pin until coming to Canada, and it blew me away. I later learned that the US will start rolling it out in 2015, so your experience is not too far off from reality.