December 23, 2013 - The recent theft of payment data from customers of US retailer Target has highlighted the importance of security in this area once again and raised fears that the US is behind other nations of the world in its data protection and security countermeasures, particularly in regard to its slow adoption of Chip and PIN security technology.

While chip and PIN would not have stopped this latest data breach it still prompted Rush Taggart, chief security officer at the CardConnect payment processor, to predict that this latest incident will strengthen calls for the adoption of the technology, alongside a general tightening of card and payment security measures in the US, as with the PCI-DSS standard in the UK. Indeed, Taggart told 'Reuters': "I think we all wish it [chip and PIN] had happened over the last four years [in the US]."

Retailers in the US have lagged behind in the adoption of chip and PIN systems, which are commonly used across Europe, Canada and elsewhere around the world. Rollout costs and the unfeasibility of manufacturing and setting up 10 million payment terminals across the nation is cited as the reason behind the lack of uptake so far, but as fraud losses and data breaches mount this equation may change as it has elsewhere.

Research conducted by Javelin Strategy found that in Europe, 94% of sales terminals now use the chip and PIN system. The figure is slightly reduced in Canada and Latin America (77%), which had later rollouts, but well ahead of the US where only 10% of sales terminals have the capability to accept payments via the chip and PIN method due to the lack of a national rollout strategy.