It's not the terminal upgrade that's the barrier. At many businesses, if you upgrade the terminal you also have to replace the point-of-sale system. Then you have to integrate it with your existing backend sales system, fulfillment system, inventory system, and more. And you're lucky if all of that can then be integrated into your accounting system. Then you have to retrain all of the people who will ever touch any part of the entire process.
You see it as upgrading the terminal because that's all you see. But that is the very small tip of a very large iceberg.
A lot of the third world leapfrogged to mobile payments and never had widespread credit card adoption. So it's more like 4% of the world hasn't done a thing the 10% of the world that HN perceives as "rest of the world" has done.
Here in the UK the government engaged in a big campaign to encourage companies to support it due to the added security. Within a year pretty much every shop could accept chip and pin. None of them suffered financial difficulties as far as I am aware.
You Americans need to stop whining and get on with it like the rest of the world has. I mean, honestly, most shops here are now moving on to accepting contactless payments, so you're two generations behind. Makes America look like backward yokels.
There was literally nothing stopping the US from following suit apart from culture and lobbying. You're the richest country in the world, it'd be a rounding error.
Other commenters have given plenty of reasons. I never understand the obsession Europeans have with getting other parts of the world to be identical to them. Worst part is when we do adopt your practices you start whining about how we copied you.
It's not the terminal upgrade that's the barrier. At many businesses, if you upgrade the terminal you also have to replace the point-of-sale system. Then you have to integrate it with your existing backend sales system, fulfillment system, inventory system, and more. And you're lucky if all of that can then be integrated into your accounting system. Then you have to retrain all of the people who will ever touch any part of the entire process.
You see it as upgrading the terminal because that's all you see. But that is the very small tip of a very large iceberg.