In reply to Philip Cohen.

Addressing your post bottom to top:

1. If a terminal accepts a swipe from a chip card, the main security benefit (preventing counterfeit cards from being used) is lost, so there's no benefit at all. Thus, enforcement of the "use IC where feasible" flag is essential (and Walmart doesn't do it in the US...).

2. Not all contactless is EMV and not all EMV is contactless. There are essentially four types of card: magnetic stripe only, contactless magnetic stripe card, contact EMV chip card, and dual-interface EMV chip card (contact and contactless). The VAST majority of EMV chip cards in the US are contact EMV chip cards. They do not have a contactless interface and cannot be tapped.

2a. Likewise, a majority of contactless readers in the US are NOT part of an EMV implementation. They construct a magnetic stripe transaction from the data on the contactless chip. This is still more secure than a normal magnetic stripe transaction, as there is some dynamic data.

MOST shops in the US are magnetic stripe only, and a few are magnetic stripe + contactless. Only a rare few are EMV chip + contactless. All of the USA Technologies vending machine readers are magnetic stripe + contactless. There is no EMV support, though contactless EMV may be possible in software? There is no contact smart card reader to add contact EMV support. A Google Image search for "USA Technologies ePort" will show you these readers.