The US is set to follow Europe by introducing EMV chip cards over the next couple of years, with liability for fraud-related loses switching to retailers that have not upgraded their hardware in October 2015.

However, the recent Target data breach has given added urgency to the migration, with regulators and lawmakers urging issuers and retailers to roll out the technology as quickly as possible.

Back in 2012 Visa made clear that the introduction of EMV cards will not necessarily mean chip and PIN, arguing that "we can rely on online processing where transactions are transmitted in real-time to the issuer for approval. With that in place, there's no need for the offline authentication that was the genesis of chip-and-PIN."

JPMorgan Chase has been issuing chip and signature credit cards but, in the post-Target environment, has decided to switch to chip and PIN, says the National retailers Federation.

According to Digital Journal, Jamie Dimon, CEO, JPMorgan Chase, said during a recent earnings call: "All of us have a common interest in being protected, so this might be a chance for retailers and banks to for once work together, as opposed to sue each other like we've been doing the last decade,"

NRF president and CEO Matthew Shay has welcomed the latest move: "Use of a PIN is absolutely essential to providing merchants and their customers with the full extent of protection available from chip-based cards.

"The chip authenticates that a card isn't a counterfeit but it's the PIN that ensures the card is being used by its actual owner and not a thief scrawling an illegible signature. Chip-and-signature cards just don't offer the level of protection needed to help stop criminal hackers from making money off payment card data."