Yeah, I know what you mean, problem is that the big retail stores have no pricing flexibility because the pricing is set at the parent company by accountants, cash discounts are much more prevalent in small local establishments like mom and pop type stores regardless of the goods being sold, every business needs to turn a profit and the bigger the store is the less flexibility it has in pricing because profit margins are closer/tighter because of competition, there are exceptions like what is called "loss leaders" which is a item sold at cost or below to get you in the store in hopes that while there you'll buy something else that will turn a profit for the company. The thing big chain stores have going for them is the ability to buy huge quantities of a given item cheaper so it can sell them at a lower margin because of the quantity, but as we saw with a chain like Circuit City it takes more than quantity buying and a presents to be profitable in a saturated marketplace like consumer electronics..
Even my bank issued ATM card is now visa and it has a chip and pin along with NFC.
I don't like using it to pay for things but it like habit one all the time.
Why is it again that the USA is seen as advanced?
It wasn't until recent years (the last 10) that I realised that how far behind the US is at a lot of things. It's shocking because I had been lead to believe via all the media before that the US was so far ahead while in fact it was not. It is only since the internet being as big as it is that I see that so many countries around the world make a lot of things in the US outdated.
media pushed it for so long and until the internet we couldn't check it, now we can see bold faced that it is far from the truth. For a lot of people though it is hard for them to shake the picture they had been sold all those years ago.
Change is harder to implement in the ISO due both geographic and population size and distribution.
It is easier to do in Europe because each country can implement things on their own time table.
I am probably very wrong but can each state not do this individually? The same as each country in Europe did?
States aren't as independent as countries In the EU. And normally State legislatures leave big stuff like banking to the federal government.