If you want to travel outside the U.S.

Pretty much ANYWHERE you go now worldwide outside the U.S. you need chipped cards (atm and credit cards) but you also need a RFID wallet to protect the information off that card from being stolen by portable scanners in the hands of criminals.

The reason you need smart chips is most places now won't let you take much money out if you don't have a chipped card. My wife first noticed this in Paris in 2009 when she couldn't get as much cash out (likely not more than about $100 dollars approximately in euros) at an ATM without a chipped card. But, at that time we also had other credit cards and cash besides ATM debit cards so we were okay.

Later (likely around 2014 I went to visit my son when he lived in Seoul, S. Korea when my grandson was born then and I had the same problem of not being able to get enough cash out fast enough to actually do what I wanted to. Luckily I brought enough U.S.  cash that I could convert it into S. Korean Won so this is how I mostly solved the problem then.

But, after this experience in 2014 my wife and I got smart and now we have ONLY chipped cards and nothing else. However, then you need an RFID walled to keep them in with metal filings (usually pieces of aluminum embedded within them to prevent the chips from being scanned by mobile pocket readers that criminals have to scan your chipped cards now.

So, yes, you need chipped cards to travel but then you have to protect your numbers on your cards from criminals by having an RFID wallet to protect your cards (ATM and Credit Cards). Or you can just carry a lot of cash and credit cards (but even credit cards now can be a problem if they don't have chips especially in places like Europe, Japan and South Korea).