Canada did a soft change at both ends. We have chip/pin cards, but also still have the magnetic strip as well. And merchants have machines that can take the chip/pin cards and can swipe the old style cards.

My understanding it didn't happen that way and people from Europe had problems in the US when their cards had no meg strip and Americans had problems in Europe with cards without a chip.

Based on the experience of people of the Island now, it sounds like SXM did a mostly soft conversion, too.