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American Express, Mastercard and Discover to Eliminate Signature Requirement for Purchases in April 2018
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Biggest shock to us yankees is when we go up north and you all expect us to tip, even though you don't actually do so yourselves.
But don't you think the acceptance of that is actually a result of the tipping culture? As countless others have said, why not just do away with tipping as a matter of course and introduce a proper minimum living wage instead? Surely that's a better system?
A tip should be about "pay me a bit extra if you think the service I provided today was remarkable" rather than "pay me a bit extra as I can't afford to live if you don't". Otherwise it's just a form of emotional blackmail by the employers.
At some terminals requiring my signature, I have seen my writing appear while the stylus is still several inches away from the writing surface. At others, I have to start writing before it realizes it should be awake, and I have to start writing again.
"writing" = "scribbling" because it doesn't really matter; credit card companies finally realize this fact.
They're seriously neanderthal. They stayed with the magnetic strip when we moved to chip and pin.
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I don't understand how a signature improves security. For several years now, I've been signing with an "X" with no problem. It's just a wasted step in the checkout process.You're looking at it backwards.
The US treats its card users like Kings and Queens.
No need to remember a PIN. Our signature is good enough.
First one is me but with the proviso that I write check for ID in the signature line; never leave it blank.
Second was my 85-y/o mom until I taught her to just sloppily initial the receipt, and then we moved her onto Apple Pay on her Apple Watch; almost no initialing any more.
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US didn’t have a significant fraud problem until a few years ago; this the investment in new systems wasn’t justified and thought was that newer technologies would replace the European chip+pin approach before the fraud became a big issue. Reality was that both the fraud issue came faster and the new tech came slower than anticipated.
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And Switzerland even in little mom and pop shops (fairly prevalent although not in every restaurant.)
You're supposed to sign the back of your card. That's the signature they're supposed to verify with.
This is supposed to be the first step to verify your signature. But, alas, I can't remember the last time this was verified. Back in the 80s, it was checked all the time. The 90s, about half the time. Since then, almost never.
I think the big difference between the US and Europe is that there is more regulation and standardisation around card payments.
With regards to this...oh yeah we are way behind.
Still have not gotten the sweet joy of Apple Pay because Best Buy rewards zone is a no show. Very sad.
I actually wish they would REQUIRE a signature on all NON-Contacless payments to hopefully entice the holdout retailers to allow NFC payments.
This would also have a side effect of helping all consumers to also adopt NFC usage to speed up their own purchasing process.
This would also have a side effect of helping all consumers to also adopt NFC usage to speed up their own purchasing process.
It's a vestige of maintaining control by the elite class. Underpay the employees, and give the customer the power to make demands and control the server. It fosters an attitude of superiority and servitude, along with an employers "right to refuse service to anyone".
This article combined with Quick Chip making it possible to insert/remove while items are still being rung up means I'm not sure why anyone would bother using something like Apple Pay (assuming one doesn't care too much about security, which I imagine is a fair number of people). It's amazing to me how much the card networks sabotage US issuers and NFC wallet providers by making it so that there's little to no convenience benefit to contactless payment whatsoever.
I didn’t say it was effective. I think it needs to go away and tokenized payments (Apple Pay and the like) should be what is required for electronic payments.
Several stores I have been to require both a signature and a photo ID when using Apple Pay or any type of credit card.
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Chip & PIN is completely non-existent in the US; most US cards don't even have a PIN except for cash advances, which most people don't do given the confiscatory associated interest rates.
Debit Visa cards have pins customers use all the time. Clearly it is a proven method. The lack of pins I have read is to eliminate potential issues with a lazy US consumer base forgetting their pins.
The stores requesting photo ID for Apple Pay have not been properly trained. The entire benefit of ApplePay is that only the authorized card holder can use it. The only way this could not be true is in the case of identity theft, for which a phot ID won't help at all.
The signature thing is likely baked into the hardware, and can't be disable for one type of payment over another, or some corporate lawyer would rather keep just in case they didn't understand the Apple agreement correctly.
In many countries, there are only a few banks. And even the POS terminals are controlled by them. That made it a lot easier to flip everything.
Conversely, in the US we have literally thousands of banks big and small, and POS terminals are sold and controlled by a bunch of different service providers.
And nobody wants to slow down consumer spending by throwing in too many new things at once
The credit card companies watched other country rollouts carefully for lessons. For example, Canada actually took a really long time to get started to moving to chip in earnest, partly because of test conversions which found that yes... people forgot their PINs! Plus many small businesses resisted getting new terminals for years.
Canadians forget all this, because they're mostly converted now. But US banks and cards paid attention. With the far greater number of terminals and cardholders in the US, rolling out at the same speed would take us two decades!
Anyone who knows the passcode to a phone can use its Apple Pay. Granted, that would be rare (or not, perhaps with close spouses, for example), but the point is that Apple Pay certainly does not guarantee that the user is also the cardholder. It just makes it far more likely.
The only way to guarantee it, would be for cardholders to have to register their biometrics in person at say, a bank. And then for each POS terminal to compare the purchaser's biometrics with those on file at the bank.
Indeed, this was the original plan for using biometrics by the card companies. However, as with so many things associated with cards, using local biometrics was deemed "good enough", even though it's not perfect.
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We probably could have done PIN in a shorter amount of time/at all if we wanted to. Fact is, the parties that were driving this didn't think whatever fraud savings was worth the effort. And considering that cards can be disabled instantly through banks' mobile apps and that there is an impression that EMV is "obsolete" or close to it, I'm not surprised they came to that conclusion.
Next up: how they're going to handle online fraud. For some reason I get the feeling that mandating 2FA for online purchases isn't something the banks (and possibly even online retailers) want to do either.
The US phased out the monarchy yearssssssss ago!
Am I missing something here or is the UK seriously Neanderthal?!