Where I am, PIN and Card arrive in different letters, and the Card letter is only sent once you confirmed via your online banking interface (which uses 2FA) that you received the PIN letter. And you need to confirm online in your banking interface to have received the card to be able to use it.
This may seem foreign to most people here, but there's still a TON of people who don't do online banking or have an account setup/bookmarked for all their financial institutions online sites.
That's changing as of this month. Most banks have already issued new chip cards, which require a PIN. If a merchant is still using the old swipe and sign system, now they'll be liable for any fraudulent transactions if the customer has a chip card.
All of the new chip cards in the US I've read about are signature only. It was decided that the US consumer would dislike the added complication of needing to use PIN.
I'd like a chip card that requires a PIN (and that is accepted widely in the US) because such a card would make unauthorized charges less likely after the card is lost or stolen, but was not able to find one.
I have a US chip card where I've set a PIN for transaction purposes, so it's not signature only, but it'll still accept both. That said, all of the chip card readers that I've used (few and far between still...) seem to have been configured for signature only, so I haven't been prompted for my PIN yet.
I opened an account at Metro Bank (in London), in a branch. They verified my id, then printed a debit card — this took about 10 minutes — and let me set its initial PIN in the bank.
I don't know if this is now normal in the UK. The previous time I opened an account in-branch was 2004, when the chip card arrived by post a few days later, with the PIN in a separate letter.
Similar situation here in Germany – but some banks, as I mentioned, require you to verify online that you received the letters, if you enabled this security feature.
In fact, I’ll go next friday to the bank to get a new debit card, as my existing one stopped working a few months ago.
Metro Bank are a newcomer to the market who've focused heavily on streamlining their customer enrolment because of that. I don't think other banks offer this.
Where I am, PIN and Card arrive in different letters, and the Card letter is only sent once you confirmed via your online banking interface (which uses 2FA) that you received the PIN letter. And you need to confirm online in your banking interface to have received the card to be able to use it.