Right, you mean you've only ever swiped them? That'll change later this year, when merchants who want to avoid liability, enable their terminals to require inserting chip cards in the chip reader slot. No doubt there'll be confusion at first, and some merchants with low fraud rates might not even bother, wishing instead to make paying quicker.
As for security, the chip info is nearly impossible to duplicate, so that makes it more likely that anyone who gets your account number would simply try to use it over the internet instead of in person. That's what has happened everywhere else in the world. The fraud simply shifts to a different arena.
Of course, since there's no PIN used in the US, someone could steal the card itself and use it. Not that it matters, since you're not liable for anything, especially if you report it quickly.
People wonder why the US is sticking with signatures. The deal is, banks are more concerned with keeping people constantly spending, than with fraud. To them, it's important that people disassociate real money with a credit card purchase, because the less someone thinks of a purchase as real, the more they tend to spend. Requiring a PIN... as is done with direct debit cards.. would remind them too much
Apple handwaves all over the place about security this or that, but it's not the main reason banks like Apple Pay. Heck, they're in the business of collecting fees for taking the risk... and fraud costs less than what they're paying Apple in fees. So security is not a main reason why they pay Apple.
What they really like about it is that people tend to spend a lot more money on spur-of-the-moment purchases when they have a contactless method available. And, of course, the banks get to continue to collect our purchase info to be used to calculate our credit risk and to sell such info back to the merchants and other advertisers.
That is right. I've only ever swiped. And I think I've had a chip in my card since 2014. Frankly I don't recall ever setting up a Pin on any of the cards so I'm not sure I would know what to do if it came up. But most likely any modern reader that takes the Chip will also take Apple Pay. Since Apple Pay is faster, I will probably rarely have to use the cards anyway.
I think Apple Pay's convenience is something that US banks really hope will allow them to capture much more of the cash sales. Th security is nice, but growing their business is probably even more important.
