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MasterCard Has Finally Realized That Signatures Are Obsolete and Stupid (fastcompany.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: For years, credit card companies have relied on an illegible squiggly line as the frontline of defense against credit card fraud. Customers are forced to use a pen (how retro!) to scrawl their signature on bills at restaurants and sign digitally at cash registers -- as if somehow in the age of chips, PINs, biometrics, and online fraud alerts, a line on a page is still a great tool against fraud prevention. Personally, I have been known to sign on the dotted line with a doodle of a piece of tofu and no one has ever stopped me, because signatures mean very little in this digital age. Companies are finally seeing the light. Starting in April 2018, MasterCard cardholders will no longer be required to sign their name when they purchase something using their debit or credit cards. The company has been moving away from requiring signatures for a few years now, with only about 80% of purchases (typically over a certain dollar amount) requiring a signature these days. MasterCard did some digging, though, and per its press release, realized that most of their customers "believe it would be easier to pay and that checkout lines would move faster if they didn't need to sign when making a purchase."
Your signature is just an acknowledgement of payment it is not fraud control.
I have never signed anything when I've paid by card, be it MasterCard or Visa. Heck, I haven't even signed the back of my cards, nobody looks there anyway.
I don't remember signing for a credit card statement in YEARS. I think the only country I have heard that is still using signatures is the United States. Oddly they are also the only country I know that doesn't have straight up debit cards with no credit card company as a pre-processor.
I think both Visa and MasterCard have known for a long time that signatures doesn't a good way to prevent fraud from happening there just hasn't been much traction in letting the change happen.
Kinda makes you wish they'd bitten the bullet and done chip & PIN instead, doesn't it?
At one time it was easier to demand payment if someone signed a contract, every receipt was signed to acknowledge that you agree to pay. But now the novella sized contract of ultra fine print that you automatically agree to when the credit card company sends it to you is sufficient.
I really wish we'd go to Chip + PIN. We have the technology, and it's far more secure than the chip-only nonsense that we use in the US.
It's for verification of purchase after the fact, not to prevent fraudulent purchases at the time of transaction.
Mind you, it's still kinda stupid because if someone is planning on disputing a charge they can just fuck up their signature at time of transaction BUT it's worth the clarification.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Hopefully this marks the beginning of requiring a pin for a CC transaction. As a question, at costco, the CC card can be processed before everything is scanned. I thought the transaction required the total before a chip charge could be processed. Is this not true?
I almost always sign them with a circle, square and triangle. No one in the US ever check.
The only time I'd ever had the signature checked against my passport was when I was in Europe and they never saw the non-chipped cards.
The only time I have to sign for a credit card purchase is when it's over $25. That's rare since I got Amazon Prime.
The stupid chips also do not work well at fraud prevention. They prevent some card slimmer scams, but they only protect the card if the reader actually takes chips (and most do not), making it all security theatre. You want to prevent credit and ID theft? Use cash. Only use a card when you really, really have to.
I've seen some terrible 'signatures'. The Nike Swoosh has more information. And signatures that aren't being matched, of course, are of no use in risk management.
Biometrics will come on, since your more advanced smartphone has a reasonably functional fingerprint scanner in it, and embedding that in terminals will take, oh, maybe about 4 years. Getting EMV terminals out in force took 3 years of concerted effort. Oh, yeah, fingerprint scanning terminals will be a while.
PINs work well where they are used - your waitress/waiter will need to bring a tablet or some POS device to your table. The In N Out I go to the most does this in the DRIVE THRU FOR GOSH SAKE, and only needs to deploy a receipt printer, not so hard. Since those Ziosk things are getting popular, you just have to repackage it so the fancier restaurants will put them out. Or just bring a Ziosk tablet when the time comes. Not so hard. The signature there is pointless also, so PIN or maybe a camera... Oh, dear.
So long as it doesn't need new hardware, it can be done quickly. Card -present fraud is surprisingly easy to deal with anyways. Use TFA and touch the fingerprint scanner on your phone. Oh, isn't that called Android Pay? Or Apple Pay? Your bank might have an ePayment app.
MasterCard actually isn't leading anything by doing this, it's just following the electronic card payment market...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Just because you believe something is true, doesn't make it so.
Signatures are also useful in terms of identity theft, which is now rampant.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
No, the signature was needed because that allows the credit card company to charge 2% commission from the merchant. The alternative to signature was to use a pin pad. If you use pin at the point of sale, the money comes directly from your checking account, there is no "risk" and it is no longer an unsecured credit given by the credit card company to the merchant. Point of sale terminals, pin and the ATM networks charge only a maximum of 25 cents per transaction.
It was a great marketing coup by Mastercard and Visa to create the "debit" cards, make it work in their network, and muddle the lines and demand 2% commission from the merchants. The consumers never cared about the difference. Eventually all the merchants complied and since all of them do it they were able to pass on the cost to us. So we pay 2% more on every purchase.
Unless a big player like Google or Apple come up with in independent payment network, competing with MC and Visa there is no relief for us. They all come up with ideas and fight with each other instead of Visa/MC. There is a demand for a payment method with low transaction charges for people who dont carry a balance, who have protection of 50$ limit on liability. Till something gains traction, there is nothing to challenge the duopoly.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Your signature on a CC receipt is your agreement to pay the charge.
Clerks can check the signature on the receipt against the signature on the back of the CC as a form of verification, but that is secondary.
Hopefully they will inform the USPS, as having "Check ID" or something similar on the back of the card is NOT accepted by the idiots at the Post Office.
It doesn't really happen until the US Postal Service supports it, as they seem to be the litmus test as the lowest common denominator with respect to technology. /sarcasm
Never have a philosophy which supports a lack of courage
Signing your signature on the line or your card was never about security.
It was about contracts.
Signing the back of your card means you agree with the Cardholder Agreement between you and your issuer. Merchants need to check the signature of the card because if it isn't signed, or signed incorrectly, it means the bearer (i.e., who holds the credit card) does NOT agree to the terms of the agreement and thus any transaction made can be null and void.
The cardholder agreement is that little piece of contract stating if you use the card, you agree to pay it off, interest rate, late payments, fraud, etc and all the other terms of the credit card. A merchant who does not verify your card can get screwed if you refuse to pay since you refused to agree with the agreement.
The slip that you sign is the same deal - it basically says you the bearer agree to pay the amount shown on the slip per your card holder agreement. If you do not agree, you do not sign the slip (this is especially true if the slip is incorrect - do NOT sign it). When doing a dispute, the credit card company looks at the slip and sees if it was signed. In the old days where they had the carbon paper slips and the slider machines that go ka-thunk as you used them, tearing the slip up has the same effect.
That's it. That's all the signatures meant.
And if you had "See ID" or something written on your card, the merchant is actually supposed to cut up the card - it is not a valid card (no on agreed to its use so its presentation means it must be destroyed as it's use is fraudulent).
With Chip+PIN, entering your PIN is basically agreeing to the charges, and since the PIN and everything is held securely inside the crypto processor on the smart card, it verifies you as the valid user.
And yes, this is why "Card Not Present" transactions are far more risky - you the merchant are basically relying on the good will of the customer to uphold their end of the agreement despite not actually having a signed agreement to do so.
Of course a signature isn't a fraud *prevention* mechanism...it never was, unless the early days of credit cards saw vendors having databases of customer signatures against which to compare. The signature is there for fraud *investigation*. If you argue that your identity's been stolen, the firm investigates, pulls up the purchase slip with a signature that doesn't match yours, BINGO...they know you're not bullshitting.
As more and more stores accept chip, I pay with my chip + PIN, and often, the cashier asks me to sign a receipt too, why? Also I can pay with Android Pay and the cashier still ask for a signature, it's annoying...
But I can go at Target and they don't ask anything if less than $40, go figure.
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
Next, we need to get schools to stop requiring signatures on absentee notes when kids cut school. I'm pretty sure that during junior high I wrote my mom's signature more often than she did.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I heard this on the Internet so I can't say for sure if it's true, but on the other hand, the logic is sound. Can anyone verify one way or another?
What I heard is that this is partly for use in cases of fraud. It's not so much about proving a positive as it is disproving a negative. (Or something like that.) If some random guy steals my credit card and tries to use it and gets challenged, he can always say "whoops, I found it in the parking lot, put it in my pocket, and accidentally used it instead of mine." However, no way in the world would he also accidentally sign my name instead of his own. If you're caught with someone else's card and you signed their name that is 100% proof of fraudulent intent.
Anyway, that's what I've heard. Does anyone know for sure?
That said, I can see why they'd dump the signing requirement. I'm sure the above would only be a factor in a tiny number of fraud cases, and even in those, the signature is probably an illegible scrawl 98% of the time. (And probably 99.5% with electronic signing devices.)
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
My signature is so bad that I bought a stack of cursive writing paper to learn how to do a proper signature.
My father worked in credit card all his career. From most of the stories he'd tell, as much as not, the signature came up when somebody tried to decline charges. Once they find out the CC company have the signature and it looks like their signature, they admit they bought the item but were now having buyers remorse. Next comes signatures by other family who they loaned their card to with the intent of letting them buy stuff. Once faced with knowledge there is evidence that they or their agent used the card with their agreement, they stop trying to deny charges and just pay up.
At this point in time, the whole 'signature' or 'no signature' issue is irrelevant, since electronic payment systems, from the card readers themselves all the way through to the server farms processing the data, are about as secure as a collander is capable of holding water and so far as I'm concerned you're insane if you use anything other than CASH everywhere you possibly can, limiting your risk of accounts being compromised and identity being stolen to a minimum. Instead of worrying about some little details like 'signatures' they should be spending 100% of their time determining how to secure the entire chain of electronic payment systems, end-to-end, assuming it's even possible.
Nothing? The "secret" number that is printed on the card?
I know why I don't use physical credit cards. I destroy them as soon as I get them. I only ever use credit card numbers online, when there's no alternative.
I can sign much faster than it takes to wait on the chip readers. The better security slows down check out lines much more than the old ways. I agree that the signatures don't provide much in security, especially when no one looks at them. The contention that they're slow is where I'll disagree.
From what I understand, the signature that some places require when making purchases with a credit card isn't used for authentication, but is used as a legal agreement to promise that you'll actually honor the payment, and not try to cancel/dispute the charge later on.
You're just misunderstanding it.... It's not "stolen card prevention" --- it is a form of transaction Non-Repudiation.
If you actually signed it; you can't very well turn around and claim the charge was unauthorized, so there's that deterrent.
It would be more useful if they actually authenticated that the signature was your handwriting, AND verify that the customer signs it
while being watched to ensure they don't just trace over a copy.
By requiring a signature, they make the merchant liable for fraud. In case of a fraudulent transaction, they can claim the merchant didn't verify the signature matched the signature on the card, and thus it's the merchant's fault. They do a chargeback. The merchant is out the money and the item(s), and thus the merchant has paid for the fraud. Online sales work the same way - the website asks for your billing address and phone number not because they want to sell it to marketers (though they probably do that too), but because that's the only way credit card companies have set it up so merchants can "confirm" you're authorized to use the card. If the merchant fails to confirm all these facts and the transaction is fraudulent, the credit card company can just do a chargeback and make the merchant pay for the fraud.
Once you move to a real secure card system like Chip and PIN, the merchant is out of the picture. If the transaction went through when it wasn't supposed to, then it's the credit card company's fault and they have to pay for the fraud. If the transaction went through because the cardholder shared their PIN with someone else, then it's the card holder's fault and they have to pay for the fraud. The merchant is no longer liable. And the credit card companies have to make a choice between pissing off their customer (cardholder) or paying for the fraud themselves.. By keeping the merchant liable for as long as possible, they've been able to avoid this hard choice simply by shifting blame and the cost of fraud onto the merchant.
Chip and PIN is standard in UK and Ireland and has been for a few years now.
I'm sure it is mostly to give the average joe customer a warm and fuzzy feeling that something is being done to validate who he is, its value in calming nerves far outweighs its value in preventing fraud
Nullius in verba
This is misleading. MasterCard realised that signatures are stupid decades ago when they started developing the EMV chips, and by 12 years ago had succeeded in getting merchants to stop accepting magstrip/signature card payments in much of the world by forcing them to accept liability for any transaction that's not verified with a PIN. Yes, MasterCard was among those pushing hard to get everyone using PINs. In fact, I haven't even seen a non-chipped card since about 15 years ago.
Perhaps the author forgot to consider that it's a particular country, not credit card company, that's been clinging to signatures (despite its populace wanting to catch up with the rest of the world).
It's amusing that the author goes to the trouble of doodling a piece of tofu. I realized my signature was worthless the first time I encountered an electronic signature pad. I tried to sign my name and it didn't look anything like my actual signature.
Since then I have scribbled my signature. The cashiers in the stores know I'm just faking it - they don't care. I only even make a half-hearted attempt because it takes so long to read the chip in my credit card.
The only time I even bother to try to write my signature correctly is when I'm at the bank but I don't think they care either. I don't even do it very well. It looks different - and it looks wrong to me - every time I do it. I'm so out of practice I can't even sign my name anymore.
Many years ago I disputed every charge on my credit card that someone else had made (a long and terrible and stupid story). They reversed every charge that didn't actually have a signature (like pay-at-the-pump gas purchases). The ones that actually had a signature, even though they didn't match mine, were more problematic and I ended up having to pay for most of those.
Even though I was stupid and it was largely my fault I still ended up dropping that credit card after paying off the bill and they're still trying to get me back as a customer over 20 years later.
What's in my wallet? Not that credit card. I have cash and an ATM card and a different credit card.
It's creepy how banks try to own you. That different credit card company still thanks me for being a loyal customer for 30 or so years. Yeah, I pay the bill and it usually works so I'm still a loyal customer. I actually don't have any loyalty to them at all - and the rewards points may as well be a slap in the face and only remind me of how much money I've put on my card over the years.
The reward points can only be redeemed for cheap trinkets that I would never actually buy if I had to pay cash for them.
I'm pretty sure the rest of the world has been using Chip & Pin for at least a decade now... about time the ol' US caught up!
Always enter the tip manually. Every one I've ever used calculates the percentage tip on the after-tax total rather than the pre-tax total (which is the accepted standard).
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
You're just misunderstanding it.... It's not "stolen card prevention" --- it is a form of transaction Non-Repudiation.
If you actually signed it; you can't very well turn around and claim the charge was unauthorized, so there's that deterrent.
It would be more useful if they actually authenticated that the signature was your handwriting, AND verify that the customer signs it
while being watched to ensure they don't just trace over a copy.
Your argument sums to the null set. There are zero bits of information in your post. Why do you even bother to comment?
Why in this day and age do some (older) people insist on taking out their cheque book and paying by cheque?
And on top of that, much of the time these (older) people wait until the cashier has pressed the "total" button before they take out their cheque book and start filling in the payee and amounts. ARRRRRGGGHH! Do that ahead of time if you must!
Signatures are useless as currently used. Smart move for MasterCard to get rid of them.
Dumb move to get rid of them. They should be retained and exclusively used for "high value purchases". So anytime you have a sing;e item valued over say $500 or $1,000. Require the signature, and require it to be verified. This would do wonders.
I've been drawing smiley faces, emojis, "no one checks this" and other stuff on the signature pad for years. Did you know that most of them have a line drawing limit? You can't start at one side and fill in the entire thing black. They must be storing the vector version :)
I decided many years ago that since no one ever looks at the signature and they prove nothing unless you had me personally on camera when it was signed, that I refused to bother signing them. It's a bad feature and unworthy of the time, effort, hardware support, storage and systems built to support it.
Warning: Teh poster of this messaeg is lysdexic
I'm curious to know what happens to those signed receipts. Do the merchants send copies to the credit card companies in case of a disputed transaction?
This story make me remember the Credit Card Prank (Zug Website doesn't exist anymore, I had to search into web.archive.org).
Elok
Welcome to the civilised world, US. Just in time for the rest of us to be moving on from PIN to contactless.
My main credit card is chip-and-sign. When I'm asked to sign on one of those tablet things, I always write "SECURE?" I've probably done this a hundred times, and only once did the cashier say anything--and all he said was, "Come on, it's got to at least *look* like a signature."
My company accepts signed PDFs with a digital signature. Itâ(TM)s easy, itâ(TM)s tied to my unified login for email, cloud services, etc. (itâ(TM)s not an extra password to remember). and verifiable. However when an outside company wants something signed they mean they want me to scrawl on the PDF. No problem! I have a stored scrawl I can insert with just a click, center and size it up on the line. Done! Problem is anyone else can do that if they intercepted a copy of the PDF or stole my device.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Things may have changed since I lived there, but in Japan everyone carries a hanko, or signature seal, around everywhere. It's a small stamp, usually made of something like marble or jade, which when used with an inked pad impresses a signature that has been carefully rendered for you by a stonecarver. Because a hanko is "something you have" rather than your muscle memory of "something you know" this system works only in a crime-free nation.
I specialize in Information security. I have been in the field for over 30 years so let me give all of you some inside information and some good advice.
1.Biometrics are NOT more secure, they are less secure. The reason is this; imagine if you use a password to get into your bank or computer or a safe, but then somebody finds out your password, you simply have to change the password.
But if they manage to steal your finger prints or DNA or retina scan (all of which just translate to a cryptic string of characters), you have no way of changing them. The best you can do is delete your account and set up a new one, throw away your safe and buy a new one.
Never give up control over biometrics.
2. Never give your PIN number to any store or other place you buy stuff from. it's none of their business, and if they have your card there is nothing to stop them from getting money from an ATM. The banks tell you not to give out your PIN so DON'T. if some stores require it, either pay with cash, or walk out.
3. Look at the back of your card. You see those 3 or 4 numbers? Those are required if you do an online purchase. Write them down and lock the information in a safe at home. memorize those numbers, then use a Dremel to grind them off. Next time you give your card to the waitress in a restaurant and they write the numbers down on the front and flip it over, they will be unable to buy anything online. Best they can do it use it right then and there to buy a meal for themselves.
Chipped cards are the best.
6. Use cash. It's a tried and true method and provides no trace back to you.
5. Do NOT use any kind of crypto currency. Crypto may seem great, but the blockchain has two functions. The first is cryptography of which can be done in other ways. the other is to create a ledger of every single transaction you made using it.
This is bad because evil people can and will use it to control you or threaten you. Can you imagine what would happen to you if a Pol-pot or Hitler had such technology and they were after you? You would have no chance of running or fighting.
Avoid crypto currencies as if your life depends on it because it really may.
I always thought the verification part of the signature was minor and that using it as fraud proof was the real reason -- that whoever signed it, when caught, had unambiguously committed fraud by admitting it via signature.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
This is overdue. I often lend my credit card to other people so they can buy stuff with it. Nobody looks at the name on the card or the signature anyway - this works fine. Because society runs on trust. I trust the people I give my card to, the retailer trusts the purchaser. And in a decent society, that's OK, because criminals are rare enough that we can treat them as a special case. Yay trust.
"Shoot, a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff."
By requiring a signature, they make the merchant liable for fraud. In case of a fraudulent transaction, they can claim the merchant didn't verify the signature matched the signature on the card, and thus it's the merchant's fault.
what a lovely fairy tale, too bad it has no basis in reality
THEY may feel this way but ask their legal department and whoops. For legal reasons, the signature IS the most important step in completing a contract. Without it you will have a hard time in many cases against users of credit cards that fraudulently use their cards.
I draw a smiley face or a line or something... the machine takes a few seconds and then says "signature confirmed." It's just a gimmick to make people believe that somehow they are protected from credit card fraud because some advanced technology somewhere would detect an invalid signature. Total FUD. And talking with others, it seems I am basically the only person in my local society who doesn't believe that the signatures are checked! Folks actually believe that the companies are using this as some sort of hyper-advanced fraud prevention. Even girlfriends when using their card to go grab milk or something have asked me, "but how are you going to fake my signature?"
Given this, it's very surprising to me that a credit card company would willingly get rid of this myth which people believe without question or second-thought, and builds trust in their card..
I don't understand why the US switched to chip-and-signature cards instead of the much better chip-and-pin cards like EU did. I visited Europe last month and they've got it down right. Paying at a restaurant is where it's really much better because the server never walks away with your card like they do here... thus preventing them from being able to take a picture of your card. I really wish we'd would switch to chip and pin.
For the last several years I've been signing the word FART in all caps as large as I can fit on the page or screen whenever I sign for something. I figured if there was any point to that signature somebody somewhere would say something. No one ever has said peep. I've gotten a couple of laughs from the checkout people but that's it. If that doesn't show how dumb that is I don't know what will.
That Buford's a sly one!
Mastercard (and Visa, Amex, absolutely everyone) already know this. And do this in every single other country on the planet* outside of the good ol' USA.
* Ok, can't say for sure, but everywhere I've been to europe and asia for sure. I'm sure most of the "developing" world has it as well because it's much safer and quicker.
MasterCard and their ilk (Visa, etc.) are complicit with the fraudsters. They have every interest in allowing fraudulent transactions to happen because they get a cut of the transaction from the merchant. Then they get another cut of the reversal transaction from the merchant (in the form of penalties, etc.). And if they don't, the issuing bank almost certainly does with their transactions fees. So they really aren't interested in enforcing *safe* conduct with credit cards and honest behviour on the part of merchants.
With policies like "force billing" which allows the merchant to obtain replacement card details if they have the old ones, *even if the old card was cancelled due to fraudulent charges*, even disputing fraudlent charges doesn't stop the fraudulent charges. (Before someone jumps in with why force billing is good, I don't care. If it had proper controls on it, it might be tolerable. But it doesn't. And I'm speaking from personal experience there so don't tell me it does have such protections.)
Hell, they won't even go after merchants that go out of their way to hide terms and conditions of "free offers" and the like (and other deceptive tactics) and merrily allow ongoing billing for subscriptions that people had no idea they were agreeing to. As long as there is a link in micro font at the bottom of a eleven mile long scrolling page, ten miles from the payment form, apparently it's all kosher in their minds. And those are the types of merchants that will most likely be the ones to employ force billing.
If it works in theory, try something else in practice.
Witness BitZtream getting pwned!... twice.....three times!
I think most people who don't carry balances just like the rewards programs that come with the card and don't know or don't care that the ultimate result is paying higher prices anyway.
That's me, but my choice is to pay those prices with or without the 2.5% kickback I get on everything I charge, and I charge everything - unless I can negotiate a better cash price. (It may be(?) against the merchant rules to give a cash discount, but I'm not about to enforce a merchant CC agreement).
AVS Zip Valdiation works by concatenating numbers, and padding with 0.
UK: LS8 22AJ => Enter 82200
CA: T2C4L5 => 24500
NL: 5800 => 58000
Depending on the interface, I have seen code that implements the check (pre-verification) as 00001-99999, 00000-99999, 01001-99950, which is out of spec.
Some client implementations, will simply require a "don't care" value, like 00000 or 99999 for no AVS, and if that is entered in the machine, it will work for the "No Zip Available" case.
AVS Address Validation works the same way.
123 FakeStreet = PO BOX 123 = 12 Fake St APT 3 .
That said, AVS is -only implemeted by US, CA, and some UK card issuers. Other countries the check will return "no AVS"
The gateway provider usually, will allow customers to enable AVS Address, AVS Zip, separately, and clearly warn, that any international cards will not undergo any AVS checks at all. And then give a separate option to require AVS success with the warning that all International issued cards, even with US billing address, will be declined.
I think the OP should have been clear that this is MasterCard USA only. I haven't signed for a card-present credit card payment or debit card payment in probably 15 years.
I worked at a gas station as a kid. mid '80s. Kids would bring their parent's credit card in to gas up the car and sign it "Don Ho" and it was all good. Over and over, all summer long. I remember wondering if it was going to work out ok. It always did.
To be clear, Mastercard in the US. Several other countries haven't been using signature for credit cards for well over a decade now.
I dunno why US credit card issuers decided to keep antiquated systems for so long, perhaps because you guys didn't go through periods of rampant fraud and cloning as much as we did, but it's true: the last time I had to sign a credit card slip was over 10 years ago. Perhaps closer to 15.
My current bank uses biometric vein scanner technology in their ATMs... because you know, not even chip and pin is secure these days anymore.
Come on America, sooner or later you need to move out of the 20th century.
There is no legal requirement for one's signature to be any form of one's name. If I put "See ID" on the back of my card, I am fully prepared to argue that this is my legal signature. Also if I put "Fuck you" on there, which was the tactic of a legal student of my acquaintance with more brains than sense.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
I have been signing my credit card receipts with WHY for years. I see no reason to have them. They solve no problem and most people dont even sign them, they scribble something.
If you read the MasterCard news article you'll find they're not doing CHIP+PIN, it's CHIP+nothing, and only in the US and Canada -- they don't say whether they'll switch to CHIP+PIN in the rest of the world or continue with the braindead CHIP+sign.
Back in the late sixties the department store we went to had a camera attached to a cart that they would bring out to take pictures of anyone using a credit card.
How's life in the hypocrite lane?
But Europe and Canada and other countries have had chip-and-PIN for years. I can't remember the last time I actually had to sign a credit card slip.
European gas stations don't accept cash?
Soft drink vending machines have a slot to insert bank notes (also called a "bill acceptor"). So do self checkout machines at the grocery store, change machines at the coin laundry, and fareboxes on the bus. But none of the petrol pumps I've seen has a bill acceptor.
This article needs to be changed to say MasterCard in the USA has realised, because MasterCard in most of the rest of the world had already done away with signature years ago. The issue here is not MasterCard, but the primitive banking practices used in the USA until recently.
After I sign my card, along with a "Please ask for photo ID", I place a piece of Scotch Magic tape over it. The tape all but disappears, and the signature stays good for the life of the card.
PlaynBass
Which country is this? I haven't signed a credit / debit card receipt for over a decade, and I don't live in a civilized place (Brazilian here).
Are there countries out there still using it?
We have chipped cards and a PIN is used in Canada for many years...
Basically, this is an US issue only. Everywhere else Chip and PIN used exclusively. Signatures haven't been used in western Europe for over a decade now and our credit cards come with a magnet strip only if you plan to visit the US.
The only times I have to sign for a purchase made by credit card are:
1) when the payment system is down and can't confirm my PIN
2) at hotels (they're so 19th century sometimes)
3) in the US (see 2)
i've only been suggesting this for 7 years!