From what I have heard, from people who were involved with the initial chip and Pin thing at RBC is that when "most" of the cards in a given area have chips then if someone tries to swipe a chipped card in that area it won't work, they will have to use the chip and pin. Seems to me to be as good a scheme as it could be. Frankly they should have done it about 5 years back but there were problems with getting the US to go along as long as Visa was owned by the banks. Now Visa is a separate company it will speed up a bit.