I've been waiting for this to come to the US, having experienced it a lot in Europe and Canada. But I read somewhere that they did a trial for this but US patrons didn't like it because they didn't like specifying the tip while the waiter was there.
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Mastercard, Discover and Amex Ending Signature Requirement for Purchases Tomorrow, Visa to Follow Later This Month
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I work at a small grocery store, and we have a reader that can accept contactless payments. It's one of those readers you would normally see at an independently owned convenient store
It is definitely several seconds faster when people use Apple/Samsung Pay, or a tap2pay card.
It goes through much quicker. The chip is sooo slow.
I'm amazed at how many people don't have their cards set up in their iPhone. One guy that comes through my line regularly always has his phone out, and puts it down and inserts his chip. I try to encourage people to set up
Pay, especially when they gripe about chips and I see they have an iPhone 
Its been years since I’ve signed a credit card, or swiped.
The US banking system is archaic.
The US banking system is archaic.
Name dropping Canada so that the USA don't feel lonely when, in fact, Canada has been using PIN and chip for a decade...
So glad about this. It means I don’t have to handle that grody pen which increases my chances of getting sick.
I’ve had a credit card since 2003 and can only think of a few times I’ve been asked to compare signatures. Most of the time the horrid machine has a resistive touch panel that is so bad that the signature never comes close to matching. My first card I used for years before needing to show a signature. Why do I remember? Because I had never signed the back. I didn’t even know that was a thing. And the store just let me sign the back and then compared it to the receipt I just signed. It was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen.
Last year I was putting in a downstairs kitchen and paid for $6000 worth of stuff at Lowe’s on my card and they never even asked to check the signature. And yet I remember spending about $40 at a clothing store a few years ago and they asked to check signatures and it made me laugh. Glad to be rid of this. Usually you don’t even have to sign for under $25 but the other day I had to sign for only a few bucks and it irritated me because it was the pharmacy and every sick person has to handle that pen to sign. Gross. And it wasn’t just to sign for the prescription, it was for the payment too. Had to sign twice, once digitally and once with a pen for the payment. So I guess it just doubled my germ contact. I’m just paranoid about that because my kids were in the hospital a bunch this winter.
I’ve had a credit card since 2003 and can only think of a few times I’ve been asked to compare signatures. Most of the time the horrid machine has a resistive touch panel that is so bad that the signature never comes close to matching. My first card I used for years before needing to show a signature. Why do I remember? Because I had never signed the back. I didn’t even know that was a thing. And the store just let me sign the back and then compared it to the receipt I just signed. It was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen.
Last year I was putting in a downstairs kitchen and paid for $6000 worth of stuff at Lowe’s on my card and they never even asked to check the signature. And yet I remember spending about $40 at a clothing store a few years ago and they asked to check signatures and it made me laugh. Glad to be rid of this. Usually you don’t even have to sign for under $25 but the other day I had to sign for only a few bucks and it irritated me because it was the pharmacy and every sick person has to handle that pen to sign. Gross. And it wasn’t just to sign for the prescription, it was for the payment too. Had to sign twice, once digitally and once with a pen for the payment. So I guess it just doubled my germ contact. I’m just paranoid about that because my kids were in the hospital a bunch this winter.
The problem I see here is that with not every bank in the world using chip+PIN, the higher the chances of credit card fraud could occur.
Case in point: I had that happen to me with a fabricated card that drained my entire bank account when I was living in Las Vegas. Someone had printed a fake card with my name on it and went on a shopping spree in Southern California. bought about $9000 of office equipment as well as dinner for 30 people at a restaurant. At none of those places (a brick+mortar office supply store, the restaurant, and petrol/gas for their car) did the people there ask for a signature. I still had my card on me, so I knew my card hadn't been stolen. It took me months to get that resolved, let alone the bounced payments for missing paying off my bills to roll off my credit report. If those there had done their due diligence and checked for the signature let alone the ID to verify the purchaser, none of that would have happened.
BL.
Case in point: I had that happen to me with a fabricated card that drained my entire bank account when I was living in Las Vegas. Someone had printed a fake card with my name on it and went on a shopping spree in Southern California. bought about $9000 of office equipment as well as dinner for 30 people at a restaurant. At none of those places (a brick+mortar office supply store, the restaurant, and petrol/gas for their car) did the people there ask for a signature. I still had my card on me, so I knew my card hadn't been stolen. It took me months to get that resolved, let alone the bounced payments for missing paying off my bills to roll off my credit report. If those there had done their due diligence and checked for the signature let alone the ID to verify the purchaser, none of that would have happened.
BL.
Can you imagine the millions of collective hours this will save every day.
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This is a good point though, if people aren't required to sign receipts they may forget to fill out the tip at restaurants.
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Expecting every cashier at every business to check ID for every card they get is unreasonable. And none of them are qualified to compare signatures anyway - do you actually think they're going to turn down a sale because in their completely uneducated opinion the signatures don't look close enough??
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It's also just tacky to have someone bring a credit card machine to the table for you to check out, having experienced it in Europe - maybe if they start making the terminals more sleek.
This is a good point though, if people aren't required to sign receipts they may forget to fill out the tip at restaurants.
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Places that regularly experience credit card fraud (most people don't know that businesses get charged between $20 and $40 for every chargeback they receive, no matter what the amount charged was - so a $2 burger could end up costing them $42) will ask for ID. Everywhere in Las Vegas asks for ID for instance because credit card fraud is rampant.I'm in California too, and I am rarely asked for an ID with a credit card purchase. So I am thinking, it must be you.
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For the protection of their productions and store from fraud, yes. That is what they are supposed to be doing: being proactive in protecting themselves and the consumer from fraudulent transactions, not reactive. The former protects them and the consumer; the latter costs them time, money, and lost revenue for products that were sold not in good faith that they will never recover.
That could have been prevented by not only checking the signature, but the ID of the person holding the card to verify that they are truly them. Like with two-factor authentication, two of the biggest factors used are:
- who you are; and
- what you have.
BL.
Generally no. That’s often about marketing. They like to know where customers come from. In the past some credit cards would ask for a zip code at unattended terminals in locations lkke gas stations to verify. I don’t think that has been done in years though.
I remember a big campaign around "chip + PIN" in the UK while I lived there in 2008, I believe it became mandatory that year to use a pin with a chipped card. I seem to recall that when the chip read failed Tescos would swipe the magnetic strip, then I had to sign instead.
Funnily enough when visiting England as a tourist last year it was relatively common to have to sign, even though Australian cards went chip & PIN in the early 2000s before the UK. Almost everywhere in Australia has been contactless enabled for years, I don't even remember the last time I had to insert my card (contactless + PIN for transactions over a certain value depending on the card & the bank). Let alone swipe the magnetic strip, that's truly archaic!
I remember working in retail in Sydney in 2000-2001 we had more than one American tourist pay with a Visa or Amex which had "no signature, check my ID" written on the signature strip.
Simple. Check the signature on the card versus the signature on the receipt before handing the card back. If they don't match, void the transaction and call someone in to question why the signatures don't match, or ask them to provide another form of payment.
BL.
Fraud fell in the UK when this backup method was withdrawn. Now, on a UK card, there is no option to sign.
Similarly, online fraud fell with the ‘verified by visa’ tool came online. When you check out, you are directed to your bank page that shows you a secret message you’ve added, to prove the site is genuine, then you are asked for personal details like date of birth etc.
Essentially, tools like Apple Pay will take over as your phone becomes the terminal and the shops terminal is just used as a conduit to the bank.
[doublepost=1523604208][/doublepost]The worrying thing about biometric method like Apple Pay is the strip club analogy. You’ll have passed out people having their fingers used to authenticate a transaction with ladies wandering around with terminals.
So there is still work to be done for certain classes of merchant eg require a pin on the phone as part of Apple Pay as well as thumbprint for certain value transactions in certain locations.
and yet, the change was made across Europe a long, long time ago (15 years?)
Not necessarily time saving, but I think the ease of chip and pin and now contactless means that more people use cards and phones to pay for things where they used to use cash. Certainly, this slows things down in the pub.
As someone who worked in retail in Australia until 2010, I can tell you this was being deprecated (in major retail) around the time I stopped working there. Signatures for verification were actually banned in 2013-2014 from both Visa and Mastercard. EMV capability was 2013 (mandatory) here. My old employer had them available years earlier.
These days it's close to 100% contactless.
I have a (Visa) CC for ages(yes, I'm old), haven't been asked for a signature once in decades in Europe.
It's stupid and does not add anything, it's not secure either.
It's stupid and does not add anything, it's not secure either.
I'm now wondering what would happen if I just said "no thanks" and walked away when the cashier asks me to sign a receipt. Would they cancel the transaction or just say "oh well?"
Guess it doesn't really matter now, since AmEx, Discover, and MC aren't requiring signatures starting today. If I buy something today with my Discover card and they ask for a signature, I'll just walk away
I was in Germany in 1999. They had chip and pin. Sad how long it's taken the US. And we still don't require chip and pin.
It's just a hold-over from the ink pen and triplicate sales form days. Once upon a time stores did compare the signature on the back of the card with the signature on the charge slip for a match. Stores were liable for fraudulent charges if they did not.
Glad to see it going away but probably still won't be quick as merchants will have to update their terminal software and we know how quickly they do that kind of maintenance. Will be a happy day when I never have to touch one of those germ-ridden stylus again.
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What people don't realize is that Germany (or X country or federation of countries) is not the U.S. It's not an apples to apple comparison. I'm not defending how CC authorization is conducted in the U.S., but just pointing out it's more complicated on many levels.
PIN and chip? longer than a decade... Heck, we've had contactless payments easily for that decade. I know my Credit Card has had it for at least 3 different expirey dates.
the US has been ridiculously slow at adopting more secure credit cards and convenient pay options.
Starting tomorrow, the major credit card companies in the United States are officially eliminating the signature requirement for purchases, marking an end to a long running but increasingly unnecessary policy.
American Express, Visa, Discover, and Mastercard first announced plans to end credit card signatures late last year, but have now confirmed to The Verge that the policy change will go into effect starting on April 13. American Express, Mastercard, and Discover all plan to stop requiring signatures tomorrow, while Visa plans to follow later in the month.
Credit and debit card companies have long required signatures for purchases as an added security measure, but with technology improvements that include contactless payments and the adoption of EMV chip technology, signatures are an outdated authentication method.
Officially eliminating signatures when making a purchase will allow for a more consistent, streamlined, and speedy checkout experience for both merchants and cardholders. It should also streamline the Apple Pay experience in the United States, as a signature can on occasion be required for purchases over $50 when using Apple Pay, a step that will be eliminated when the signature changes become official.
American Express plans to end the signature requirement in the United States and other countries around the world, while Mastercard will eliminate it in the United States and Canada. Discover plans to end signatures in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean, and Visa is making signatures optional in North America for companies that offer chip systems.
All merchants continue to be able to collect signatures if required to do so by an applicable law in a particular jurisdiction.
Article Link: Mastercard, Discover and Amex Ending Signature Requirement for Purchases Tomorrow, Visa to Follow Later This Month
I'm now wondering what would happen if I just said "no thanks" and walked away when the cashier asks me to sign a receipt. Would they cancel the transaction or just say "oh well?"
Guess it doesn't really matter now, since AmEx, Discover, and MC aren't requiring signatures starting today. If I buy something today with my Discover card and they ask for a signature, I'll just walk away
from my undrstanding, not signing wouldn't void the transaction, however, the transaction can only be posted at the exact dollar amount specified.
Family who worked in restaraunts would encounter this way back when patrons would fill out the tip portion, then not sign the chit. They were legally only allowed taking the principle value of the bill from the card, but no additional portion for the tip without the signature.
I get that but that was 18 years ago. So it took around 16 years for the US to get a chip in their cards? It’s embarrassing and the reason why is because the CC companies didn’t want to make it harder on the people.
Luckily that whole Target thing happened and made them push the CC companies harder to get better security. There is no reason why we shouldn’t have had chip cards 10 or more years ago.