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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."
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.
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.
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
The best way to prevent ID theft is to stop pretending it's a real thing. Identity theft should be treated as not having anything to do with the consumer whose identity has been "stolen" at all. It's fraud between the criminal and the financial institution or lender. It should immediately end, as far as the consumer is concerned, with a statement that the consumer didn't open the account.
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!
I've never had a signature on a card be legible for more than a month or two. I can pull out my debit card and the signature will be almost as good as blank.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.