There is reason to hope.
About 75 percent of credit cards are chip-enabled. If all businesses upgraded their terminals — which they are not required to do by law — at least the confusion over whether to swipe or insert would be settled.
So far, about one-quarter of the nation’s merchants have made the transition, said Jason Oxman, chief executive of Electronic Transactions Association, a trade group for companies that deal with payment products and services.
But while many of them have the terminals, they are waiting to get them certified for use, said Jared Drieling, the business intelligence manager for the Strawhecker Group, a consulting company for the industry.