That's not quite accurate, depending on the type of merchant. If you were a merchant who had very little dispute activity, a restaurant, for example, where almost no one disputes whether the meal was good, where the returns are very low, you may not need a chip device. Please keep in mind that the cards themselves will still have a magnetic stripe on the back. For example, when you go the U.S. or anywhere else that doesn't take chip cards, and you want to buy something, you'll still have a magnetic stripe. The issuer will need that for you to be able to buy something, say, in the United States. We will still need to be able to process mag-stripe transactions, since we have U.S. customers coming to Canada and using the machines.
On May 26th, 2009. See this statement in context.