That may finally be about to change. Last week, the United Nations Federal Credit Union (UNFCU) became the first financial institution in the U.S. to unveil plans to issue credit cards that comply with the Europay MasterCard Visa (EMV) smartcard standard. The credit union's new Platinum Visa EMV cards will be issued to about 5,000 of its most high-value customers and can be used anywhere EMV cards are accepted

Cards based on the EMV standard use an embedded microprocessor instead of a magnetic stripe to store cardholder data and all of the other information needed to use the card for a transaction. Many financial institutions that issue EMV Chip cards also require cardholders to enter a Personal Identification Number (PIN) as an added security measure when using the card.

Chip-and-PIN credit cards are considered to be significantly safer than cards with magnetic stripes, which has led to the widespread adoption of EMV smartcards across Europe and in several other countries. EMVCo, an organization run by MasterCard, Visa, American Express and others to administer the EMV standard, estimates that close to a billion EMV cards were in use worldwide in 2009.

Financial institutions in the U.S., however, have resisted using the technology because of the expected costs of integrating it into the payment system. To accept Chip-and-PIN technologies, merchants will be required to either upgrade or replace all of their existing payment terminals. Banks, too, could end up spending significant money to roll out the cards to customers.

But that reluctance to adopt the technology is being felt by U.S. travelers abroad, said Merrill Halpern, card services manager at UNFCU. U.S. card holders are finding it harder to use their magnetic stripe cards in countries that have standardized on EMV technology. That's especially true in situations involving unmanned payment terminals such as ticket kiosks at railway stations or payment stations at parking garages.