Chipped credit cards

Visa and Mastercard are not quite accepted everywhere - while in Penang, shopping at the Tesco I had my Visa card refused because the card issued by a U.S. bank was not chipped. Chipped cards require a PIN for the transaction while unchipped cards require managerial pre-approval which can be a tedious process especially when the checkout lines are long. Canada, Europe and Asia have embraced chipped credit cards. It appears that U.S. is the only large country that has decided to lag behind and stay with 20th century technology.