also,
other countries have completely switched over to chip/pin for security reasons with little or no problems but due to not wanting to confuse US tourists the terminal software must allow pin-bypass so they can still sign instead of using a pin.
my bad, it's been years since i last worked in that field. And I just remember sighing a lot at all the hoops that had to be jumped through in the name of security and then to just allow people to bypass it.
sigh.