Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "At best I've found chip reading to work about 60% of the time ... Making it totally useless for the (thankfully small) number of merchants whose POS systems won't let you fall back to mag-stripe" Here in the UK, many (most?) new payment terminals don't have mag-stripe readers at all. And I expect banks will start issuing new cards without a magnetic strip in the near future, if they haven't done so already. I agre…
But if your card's chip is broken, can't you just get your bank to send out a new one? Of course I can. But that means I have to stop and take time out of my day to call my bank and dick around with them. And then if the new card comes with a new number (I don't know if it will or not), and/or expiration date (that almost certainly will change), then I have to login to EVERY SINGLE ONE of the places online where I us…
Your new card will have a new number and expiry date, but the old one will remain valid.
In any case, these days my web browser remembers card numbers and fills them in automatically, so it’s really not such a big deal to update card numbers online.