jportzer, you're spot on re the merchants not having chip facilities. This is changing quickly though.
Here in NZ, we were required to change all eftpos/credit card machines about 12 months ago to accept Chip and Pin. So everybody over here is required to have machines that accept them, but banks still don't issue cards here with chips.
I notice that banks in Aussie are issuing the chips, but pins aren't remembered. We have a lot of Aussie customers come and pay by credit card with chips, of course the only way to accept the card is with the PIN. Most don't even know what their PIN is!
So you guys have the cards, we have the machines... It would be nice to have them both working though.