The languid pace of the penetration by EMV chips of the US magnetic payment card user base is a feature of a new study by US industry publisher, The Nilson Report.At June 30, there were 1.28 billion credit, debit, and prepaid cards in circulation from US issuers of Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover products, Nilson reports. "Among those cards, 54.2 per cent or 697 million had EMV-compliant chips as well as magnetic stripes.""Those chip cards could be used at 1.3 million merchant locations in the US."Purchase volume for the first six months of 2016 generated by the EMV chips on Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover cards was US$206 billion, or eight per cent of gross spending volume of US$2.5 trillion. Nilson reports that volume was generated by 4.2 billion transactions, "equal to 9.6 per cent of all purchase transactions made using those cards.'The Nilson Report projects that "more than 85 per cent of all Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover cards in circulation in the US will have EMV chips by the end of 2016.""The number of purchase transactions initiated by chips instead of magnetic stripes will equal 24 per cent of all purchases for goods and services." The lack of EMV payment terminals in the US is source of losses through fraud to Australian banks, with the Australian Payment Clearing Association spelling this out as the lead risk in the most recent fraud data.The absence of an NFC payment ethic - thanks to the reluctant introduction by US banks of EMV cards - provides context for thinking about the success or otherwise of Apple Pay in the US.A flop, Apple Pay may have missed its chance at early traction in a mass market denied the enabler of wider user coaching on the use and merit of NFC payments, via a chip card.Industry consultant Grant Halverson shared some insights on Apple Pay."In Apple's most recent quarterly report the company reported they have three million merchants in the US."That sounds fantastic until you realise there are 12.5 million credit card merchants in the US - and that's after two years. "What is critical with any payment product is critical mass and volume - Apple has neither. One in four merchant acceptance won't cut it and leads to consumers giving up."The one in four ratio applies to national chains as well, with Walmart one holdout.Apple has a 40 per cent share of the US mobile market, Halverson explained."Again this sounds great - there are 198 million US mobile users, times 40 per cent, equals 79.4 million Apple Phones across all models in the US. "However, only two Apple models have NFC capability and their estimated share of Apple sales are between eight to 12 per cent or 6.3 million to 9.5 million consumers. "This is simply not enough consumers to create any momentum. "For example, large Visa or MasterCard card issuers like Citi and JP Morgan have over 100 million cards."Discover with 45 million cards struggles and Diners Club with