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Credit Card Signatures Are About to Become Extinct in the U.S

• aetherspawn 9y ago
  Any picture of mentioned dog wagging tail signature?
• macintux 9y ago
  Now if we could only eliminate them for everything else. Buying and selling houses is excruciating thanks to the number of signatures required. I went to a closing on behalf of my then-wife who didn’t want to deal with it; because it was her house we were selling, I had to sign all the paperwork on her behalf, which involved a signature plus some additional verbiage. My hand was in pain by the time we were finished.
  • matte_black 9y ago
    Most of the time a signature isn’t for verification but rather for acknowledgment. I don’t give two shits what you put down as a signature, I just want a record that you consciously were present and signed something, so I don’t get accused of trying to pass off something quietly that you never agreed to. If I have some scribble you made at a time and place, the onus is on you to prove it wasn’t you who did that.
    • miketery 9y ago
      Provide an index sheet attached to a stack of papers acknowledging documents included (title, version, date on document, page count). Check by each line, one signature overall.
      • matte_black 9y ago
        Nope, too easy to argue you signed a bunch of things you did not see. I want each page initialed and important disclaimers signed at the location they appear. Will make it much easier for me in court. Much harder for you.
        • techsupporter 9y ago
          I have a genuine question, and because text doesn’t convey emotion I want to be very clear that my curiosity is genuine: what is it that you’re doing that is, by appearance to me, a common transaction (perhaps multiple times per day?) wherein you want to be absolutely sure that the customer assented to lengthy terms and conditions and you’re often going into court (at least so often that you want it to be “easier for” you)? And, as a follow-up, how does this relate to a signature being used as confirmation of payment? (Or did you mean in relation to the signatures for housing transfers?)
        • jjeaff 9y ago
          When we raised money from several VCs (using some of the top legal firms in silicon valley and NYC) all we had to sign was the very last page which had only the signature lines on it. It could have been attached to anything. And in fact, sometimes, they emailed us the signature page separately for us to sign, scan and send back. So I don't really think there is really much legal benefit to having stuff on every page to sign.
          • user5994461 9y ago
            Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean there isn't a legal benefit. A paper contract must be done in two copies. Every page numbered and signed by both parties. That's the only way to cover your ass against the other party replacing pages and terms.
            • jjeaff 9y ago
              No one does that for large contracts. We would have had to sign over 1,200 pages.
          • matte_black 9y ago
            I recommend reading what you signed, you may be getting taken to the cleaners.
    • lokedhs 9y ago
      Actually, it's the other way around. The credit card company, and by extension the merchant, have to prove that's your scribble. Here's one way to think about it. If it was the way you suggest then all an identity theif would have to do is to draw something on the dotted line and all of a sudden you're in a position where you have to prove your innocence.
      • matte_black 9y ago
        The merchant can pull up the cctv. A signature becomes more damning if a neutral third party witnessed you signing the document.
        • supertrope 9y ago
          It depends on how much money is at stake, what the alleged issue is, and what card network and network was used. Amex is infamous for almost always finding in favor of its cardholders, even more so than already cardholder biased CC isuers.
    • baddox 9y ago
      My recent apartment lease was delivered online, but required me to go through every page and click a button that filled in my initials in a cursive font. It’s silly, yes, but I’m sure it’s just there to “prove” that I acknowledged each page individually.
      • user5994461 9y ago
        It's the same as a paper contract.
      • supertrope 9y ago
        That's the e-equivalent of initialing every page of a contract. The cursive part is funny. Rituals change slowly. People trust moused signatures and fax machine timestamps more than RSA public keys.
        • amyjess 9y ago
          If it's DocuSign, they actually let you pick your own font from a list, so you can claim it's "your" handwriting because you chose it. And it's been a while, but I think they let you mouse a signature and initials if you don't like any of the fonts. The funny thing is that for the last few years, I've been trying to make my own handwriting resemble an italic serif font as much as possible, so I actually do write like a font. But for everything except my signature. I never sign anything the same way twice, and my signature is always just a random scribble. Sometimes it's even an X.
          • zodiakzz 9y ago
            >I never sign anything the same way twice, and my signature is always just a random scribble. Is that legal? o.O
            • uiri 9y ago
              Yes. If you say it is your signature, even if someone else physically signed on your behalf, then it is your signature. The hairy part is if you say it isn't your signature.
  • galago 9y ago
    I rented a property a couple weeks ago in Massachusetts, USA. The rental agency used a web form for signatures. My new landlord used something that looked like Comic Sans. So, I guess this is a thing now. I was a little surprised.
  • samwillis 9y ago
    The U.K. has just had its first house purchase signed for using a digital signature for the land registry: https://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/3029651/hm-land-registry-processes-uks-first-ever-digital-mortgage https://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/3029651/hm-land-registr...
  • seedless_sensat 9y ago
    > Buying and selling houses is excruciating Yeah, I know :'( > thanks to the number of signatures required. What!? You found that the hardest part?
  • stevekemp 9y ago
    Funnily enough I sold a house from a foreign country at the end of last year, and while I found the process annoying (there are always problems with buying/selling property), the number of signatures wasn't a problem. One of the problems I came across was the number of things I had to send through the postal system. Apparently scanned documents (signed) weren't good, and using a fax machine wasn't an option either. So I had to print forms, sign them, and then mail them - always with tight deadlines. Luckily only one piece of mail was lost en route, and it was skipped in the end. (I also had to mail back the physical bundle of title-deeds, something I was told previously was all electronic these days. Fascinating documents though, I remember when we paid off the property we received them and there are copies of each sale contract/price details since the place was built in around 1890. First sale was for £400, then the next for £1200, and every 1, 5, 20 years it would sell for more. Went for £162,500 when I sold it. That's a huge jump from the starting price!)
• u801e 9y ago
  It would be nice if they would start requiring a PIN.
  • pmorici 9y ago
    The kind of fraud prevented by a PIN enabled chip card is supposedly pretty rare. What would be more useful is a standard for browser attached chip card readers to bring the anti-fraud protections of a chip card to everyday Internet transactions.
    • tehwebguy 9y ago
      If a PIN were required for credit transactions I bet fraud from cloned / stolen cards would drop to about zero.
      • pmorici 9y ago
        Cloning is not possible with chip cards pin or no pin. That's the whole reason US issuers switched to chips from mag stripes.
        • AshleyGrant 9y ago
          It is possible to clone chip and pin cards. Not easy, but possible: https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/chip-n-pin-cloning/21502/ https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/chip-n-pin-cloning/21502/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/13/chip_and_pin_security_flaw_research/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/13/chip_and_pin_securi...
          • dfox 9y ago
            I didn't know about the first attack you mentioned, but it still seems to boil down to cloning non-EMV card onto card that behaves like EMV. For this to work I think that the terminal must be horribly misconfigured and then it almost certainly defrauds the merchant and not the original cardholder as I don't see how merchant's bank would ever authorize such transaction. The second on you mention is based on exploiting flawed RNGs in certain ATM implementations and using that to replay transactions that happened elsewhere. Fix is obvious: don't use flawed RNGs. Third known attack on EMV is similar to the "accept any PIN" part of the first, but done by MitMing the interface between terminal and card. This relies on the fact, that "No PIN was required" and "Correct PIN entered" produces same transaction certificate. This also can be mitigated by altering the terminal configuration.
• esturk 9y ago
  From experience, a signature in the checkout line usually takes about 5-10 seconds. Removing it may seem like a small negligible change for users, but for retailers, it most likely adds up. Imagine being able to pick up your receipt and leave. What I see being the stalwart of signatures are probably restaurants. They require that extra step with the tip.
  • derefr 9y ago
    The way tipping works in Canada: you get handed the card-reader, and it tells you the subtotal and asks what tip you would like to add. Then, the card-reader asks you to either tap or insert your card.
  • lettergram 9y ago
    > From experience, a signature in the checkout line usually takes about 5-10 seconds. Removing it may seem like a small negligible change for users, but for retailers, it most likely adds up. Your right, can we also remove that stupid bag tax in SF. It easily takes 20 - 30 seconds per transaction. "Do you want a bag?" "Ugh, yeah I do" "Alright that's 50 cents" "wait, could I get three bags, not two - I don't want my bag to rip" "Sure, we can do that, 75 cents" Every. single. time.
    • otoburb 9y ago
      I think the policy is working as designed. The grating, low-grade, annoying, time-wasting inconvenience is supposed to continue to irritate the purchaser until they decide to bring their own bags.
      • lettergram 9y ago
        Its funny - I do bring bags, but often I get more than one or two items. Aka I'll often get more than planned, as I look for sales. Regardless, and to the point the whole line is slowed down by this transaction. Meaning every time I went to the store I had to wait an extra few minutes for this. Moving back to Illinois recently, I find it amazing that the lines most move at least 3× faster. Probably in part due to the more "let's get shit done" attitude of the Midwest, but also the lack of bag related questions. I then come home with my paper bags and recycle them. It honestly seems like more harm to the environment the waste of time + the polyester bags we buy instead
• jpm_sd 9y ago
  Just this morning, my 5yr old daughter asked me "Daddy, why did you do just a scribble!?" in a scandalized tone of voice
  • zinckiwi 9y ago
    I had to sign approval for a field trip for my daughter once. Her teacher returned it with her the next day because it needed to be "a real signature."
• blueside 9y ago
  Signatures haven't been required for credit cards in many other countries for quite some time now. I have often wondered why the US has historically lagged behind for everyday banking. (e.g. email money transfers, chip enabled cards, pin number verification, tap to pay)
  • all_blue_chucks 9y ago
    US fraud rates are so low it's cheaper to eat the cost than to change the system. A more interesting question is: why are fraud rates so high elsewhere?
    • nness 9y ago
      [The] U.S. the third-highest rate of fraud worldwide, and was the only country to remain in the top three from 2014 to 2016. Additional research from the Nilson Report, October 2016 stated that in 2015 alone, the U.S. accounted for 38.7 percent of the worldwide payment card fraud losses https://due.com/blog/addressing-rising-payment-fraud-rates-u-s/ https://due.com/blog/addressing-rising-payment-fraud-rates-u...
  • kirillseva 9y ago
    because legacy tech wants to be amortised over long time periods. If you start implementing things later you can pick the best tech. US banking was among the first to become digital and thus still has to maintain technical choices of the past
    • tankenmate 9y ago
      The UK were the first in the world to have ATMs, so there is plenty of ageing infrastructure in the UK. But the banks were forced (partly by the EU and partly by fraud) to move to chip and pin and they did relatively quickly.
    • arghwhat 9y ago
      The resistance to change can be explained much simpler: It benefits only consumers, while costing the banks and payment providers. It's the same excuses for still having critical banking infrastructure written in COBOL.
• paul7986 9y ago
  Also please make handing me a receipt extinct too or only if requested. Especially at drive thru(s) where the receipts become trash I later have to do work .. aka clean up this annoying trash in my car.
  • jlblatt 9y ago
    Doesn't a drive thru also hand you a disposable bag filled with a bunch of other stuff that's about to become trash- napkins, wrappers, straws, etc...? Just toss it in there dude, try not to let it bother you.
    • paul7986 9y ago
      Nope they all hand me the receipt when the hand me back my bank card. Then I have to deal with a bag of food, a drink, placing my bank card back in my wallet and dropping the receipt wherever to drive off quickly! The receipt needs to go the way of signatures and hopefully soon. Not sure if you are a UX person, but the receipt in 2018 is bad UX for the customer and the business! Just like signatures have been for years..pointless, frustrating and annoying! I wish I could use Apple Pay everywhere!!!
      • mulmen 9y ago
        Put the receipt in the bag of food, you can even grab a french fry on the way out.
  • unethical_ban 9y ago
    Nope. They have to give you proof of what you bought for the thousands of times a day across the country there is a quarrel with the order.
    • paul7986 9y ago
      Use Apple Pay or Android Pay ... you see the charge right on your home screen and view your transactions whenever. The receipt needs and will go the way of the dodo bird, credit card signatures and etc...
• skookumchuck 9y ago
  It turns out that a signature on a bank check means nothing. Neither does the payer name on the check. Not the amount in cursive. Nor does the check paper. The only things that are checked are the digits of the amount, and the account number. The rest of the check can be complete garbage, and the check will go through and the bank will pay it. Then the banks will blame you, the account holder. I learned this the hard way.
  • matte_black 9y ago
    What happened next? Don’t want to try it.
    • skookumchuck 9y ago
      I wouldn't accept their evasions and eventually they gave up and credited me.
      • proofOfDeposit 9y ago
        I just want to take a moment, and tell you that you're wrong about what happens and what matters when a check is deposited (or cashed) and then cleared by the issuing account. The courtesy amount is the digits. The legal amount is the written expression for dollars. The legal amount matters, and had you taken your bank to court (if you didn't sign your legal rights over to arbitration), the legal amount prevails. There are rooms full of people working minimum wage night jobs, to verify checks that have values in conflict with each other, associated documents, or are generally illegible. Something like 90% of checks are verified by OCR, and deposited for an amount often within a margin of $2.50 per deposit. The remaining ten percent are processed by hand, balancing deposit to written amount, usually within the $2.50 same margin. This represents hours of checking transaction amounts for tens of thousands of transactions, as a fraction of the automated processing. The $2.50 is usually reviewed by managers in an end-of-day report. For maybe a quarter of a million documents processed in one evening by a room full of around fifty people running OCR equipment (made by IBM and Unisys), and performing manual image review and physical document inspection, maybe 200 are kicked out by the machinery and software to be deciphered by hand. Sometimes people get lazy, and are on the verge of quitting anyway because night jobs suck, and if you argued until you got your way, you were probably dealing with such a situation.
• throwafk81 9y ago
  Who the fuck still signs. I haven’t seen that in like 15+ years
  • armadsen 9y ago
    I take it you’re not in the US? Signatures are required for the vast majority of in-person credit card transactions above $25 or so in the US.
    • throwafk81 9y ago
      Wow. They don’t even require you to enter a PIN number or show your id here for small amounts. Just put the card near the reader (NFC) and go. Now I understand why Apple Pay is a thing
• stevep98 9y ago
  There’s something missing from this article. When you sign a receipt, you’re not just providing a sample of your signature for comparison against the one on the card. You are signing a document, usually saying that ‘I agree to comply with the terms of the cardholder agreement’ If this is no longer necessary, the card issuers must have determined that they have other legal agreements which cover purchases, and that the signature on each transaction is not necessary. Also missing is a discussion of why PINs are not seen by the banks as an obvious next step.
  • jimktrains2 9y ago
    You already made that agreement when you signed up for the credit card. You havn't needed a signature for _every_ purchase in a long long time. This is just getting rid of them all together.
  • jjeaff 9y ago
    Where does it say on the receipt that I am agreeing to the cardholder agreement? This sounds like the old myth that "if you don't sign the back of your card, you can't be held liable for the debts you incur if you contest it later." This is of course not true.
    • jkaplowitz 9y ago
      It depends on the receipt, but many receipts do say that you agree to pay for the purchase in accordance with the cardholder agreement, or some such wording. This has been decreasingly common in recent years, and I don't know the requirements, but it's not gone. You're right about the old myth you cite. The cardholder agreements are usually accepted either by signing the card or by using it.
      • ajdlinux 9y ago
        The wording is highly dependent on the country. I don't think I've seen that in Australia in a long long time, on the rare occasion that I've had to sign rather than use PIN or contactless, but I've been in Asia for the past three weeks and did a lot of signing for my card with wording that sounds like that.
• StillBored 9y ago
  Actually, doing away with the signature seems a bit odd, given all the machine learning flying around. An electronic signature that records the speed strokes in the signature are made, as well as the final result, is probably a really good way of identifying the purchaser. Of course then a lot of the smaller merchants would have to upgrade their 90's era dial-up credit card processing.
  • cryptoz 9y ago
    > An electronic signature that records the speed strokes in the signature are made, as well as the final result, is probably a really good way of identifying the purchaser. Not so sure about that. If I use a different mouse then my "signature" using those metrics will fail, as I'm basically a completely different (inept) person using other mice. Just an example, but I don't think that e-signatures can be trusted by using machine learning techniques, at least not any that I know of today.
    • dapreja 9y ago
      Yea no signature pads are pure shit.
    • StillBored 9y ago
      Yes, part of it would require some level of standardization of the electronic pad/pen. I'm not really suggesting it as "trust" thing, but a better "pin" code that could be combined with the current shopping history/etc metrics being used to detect fraud.
  • supertrope 9y ago
    Handwriting analysis was pseudo-scientific to begin with. The payments market has to accommodate illiterate customers, disabled customers, and people who have a broken hand at the moment. CC networks currently use previous purchasing patterns, location, time of day, etc. It's the same reasons why biometrics is not a magic security solution. Authentication must be based of something that's hard to fake, cheap to verify, random, and easy to change. What threshold would you set to balance false negatives and false positives? In comparison the private key in your chip card meets all of the criteria.
• machinesmachine 9y ago
  20 years too late
• coldcode 9y ago
  I took my new chip enabled CC to Germany 3 yrs ago and paid for a train ticket with it. The clerk said "ugh an American card" and had me sign some random piece of paper. I felt like an antique.
  • timbit42 9y ago
    The last time I had to sign when using my credit card was at least 20 years ago.
  • gst 9y ago
    Most European cards use Chip & PIN with pin preference: If the terminal supports it the card will ask for a chip instead of a signature. Chip-based signature transactions are only used as fallback if the terminal doesn't support pins (which is very uncommon). Unfortunately most US cards don't use a pin code at all. There are a few issuers that provide you with a pin code, but even in those cases there's typically a signature preference and the pin code is only used as fallback if the terminal doesn't support signatures. So if you're using a US card in Europe pretty much the only places where you can use the pin code are automated terminals (e.g., at train stations). At most other places you're going to have to use a signature. There are a few US issuers that issue Chip & PIN cards with PIN preference - for example UNFCU and First Tech Credit Union. Those cards work great in Europe, but are sometimes a pain to use in the US. E.g., if you're paying at a restaurant and you have to go with the waiter to the terminal in some backroom, because the terminal asks for the pin. That's not an issue in Europe, as waiters usually carry mobile terminals with them.
    • rav 9y ago
      > Those cards work great in Europe, but are sometimes a pain to use in the US. E.g., if you're paying at a restaurant and you have to go with the waiter to the terminal in some backroom, because the terminal asks for the pin. Huh? I have a European card (chip & PIN, PIN preference), and at restaurants in the US I've always signed and never had to go to the terminal in some backroom.
      • deleted 9y ago
• sourcefrenchy 9y ago
  I just use “ASK ID” as a signature on all my cards.
• sourcefrenchy 9y ago
  I just use “Ask ID” on all my cards. Surprised every time people ask and wonder if it would help if card is lost/stolen.
• 6t6t6t6 9y ago
  Once in the UK, the cashier didn't want to take my credit card because there was no signature on the back. I wondered, which kind of graphology training do Tesco cashiers go through in order to be able to identify a fake signature?
  • Mindless2112 9y ago
    For Visa, the merchant should require your card to be signed because a card with no signature is invalid. Other credit card companies are probably the same. > Unsigned Cards > While checking card security features, you should also make sure that the card is signed. An unsigned card is considered invalid and should not be accepted. If a customer gives you an unsigned card, the following steps must be taken: > • Check the cardholder’s ID. > Ask the cardholder for some form of official government identification, such as a driver’s license or passport. Where permissible by law, the ID serial number and expiration date should be written on the sales receipt before you complete the transaction. > • Ask the customer to sign the card. > The card should be signed within your full view, and the signature checked against the customer’s signature on the ID. A refusal to sign means the card is still invalid and cannot be accepted. > • Ask the customer for a different signed Visa card > “See ID” > Some customers write “See ID” or “Ask for ID” in the signature panel, thinking that this is a deterrent against fraud or forgery; that is, if their signature is not on the card, a fraudster will not be able to forge it. In reality, criminals often don’t take the time to practice signatures. They use cards as quickly as possible after a theft and prior to the accounts being blocked. They are actually counting on you not to look at the back of the card and compare signatures; they may even have access to counterfeit identification with a signature in their own handwriting. > In this situation, follow recommended steps listed above under Unsigned Cards. https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/merchants/card-acceptance-guidelines-for-merchants.pdf https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/merchants/card-accept...
    • marssaxman 9y ago
      I stopped signing credit cards several years ago, as an experiment; how long will it take someone to notice? I'm still waiting.
• howlingfantods 9y ago
  I haven't touched a physical credit card in 2 years. Mobile payments is the future
• kevindong 9y ago
  My apartment's leasing office accepts UPS/USPS/FedEx/etc. packages on my behalf when I'm not available. Whenever I go in to pick up a package, they ask me for both my ID and my signature on a tablet. Immediately after I tap the 'Confirm' button, I get an email with a PNG of the signature I just "signed". When I first moved into my apartment, I made some effort to give my regular signature. Nowadays, I just make a couple waves with a single finger movement which looks like nothing out of the alphabet. The mailroom staff really couldn't care less how I sign since they've already looked at my ID. I always wonder what the point of the signature is in this scenario.
  • megy 9y ago
    You think the mail room staff at your apartment are going to care about your signature, ever?
  • zaarn 9y ago
    The point of a signature isn't identity proof, atleast not primarily. The primary purpose is conscious acknowledgement of whatever you signed.
• ada1981 9y ago
  Interestingly, many credit card companies don't keep the required paperwork to legally collect on their loans. This is a business decision they've made not to be in compliance. Cases are routinely deemed uncollectible in court when challenged and they are required to remove the items from your credit report.
  • supertrope 9y ago
    It depends on the issuer. Some will sue card (debt?) holders for as little as $1000, probably because attorney fees can be rolled into the judgement.
    • ada1981 9y ago
      What I'm suggesting is that if you are taken to court, and you understand what defense to use, they literally will lose the suit and you will win the right to have it removed from your credit report for good. I spoke to a lawfirm in PA who has literally won 100% of the time against Capital One in hundreds of debt cases because they can't provide the proper documentation required by law when asked to collect on their debts. They primarily rely on people being afraid or ignorant of the laws. This was mind blowing to me when I first realized it and then researched it and saw actual cases in real time be ruled for the defense.
• walrus01 9y ago
  I have been signing "burrito" for the past year with no adverse consequences.
  • cdubzzz 9y ago
    I usually draw a house or a scene representing the weather outside. Sometimes it makes the cashier giggle or smile and I like that.
  • amyjess 9y ago
    Half the time, I write an actual X. Especially when it's those shitty touchscreens that don't pick up much of anything. I've never had a problem. During election years, I always tell myself I'm going to sign as the presidential candidates, but I never get around to it.
• Waterluvian 9y ago
  The only time I ever sign for credit card stuff is when I visit the US. When it comes to banking it feels like the US is always chasing Canada who is always chasing Europe.
  • TulliusCicero 9y ago
    On the other hand, a large number of merchants in Germany still don't accept credit cards. Many are even cash-only. Run across them all the time in Munich, whereas not accepting credit cards was rare in the bay area, even at stands at farmer's markets, or at food trucks.
• aviaro 9y ago
  It's high time. Nothing irritates me more than a cashier asking for my signature.
  • mulmen 9y ago
    Really? Nothing?
    • quickthrower2 9y ago
      Nothing irritates me more than people taking idioms literally, with the exception of discussions where strictness/correctness is required (e.g. engineers building a bridge, court proceedings, etc.)
• post_break 9y ago
  Can we also standardize the noise the machine makes when the transaction is a success? You know that sound "ENGHH ENGHH ENGHH" that is somehow a positive sound? It's like an alarm clock sound. Why is it not a positive "Ding!" And some will say well it's to remember your card. Well if that's the case, how about force the POS system not to print the receipt until the card is pulled? Or better yet, why does the card have to stay in the machine so long?
  • eganist 9y ago
    Some places have done this. E.g. Safeway/Vons/Pavilions vs. Trader Joe's, one of them has a neutral sound, the other has that error-sounding notification. I believe the latter is the generic notification sound and vendors who customized their solutions post-chip swapped it. I just can't remember which is which right now.
    • bonniemuffin 9y ago
      I really like the happy noise the credit card machine at my Safeway makes. :)
    • astura 9y ago
      I always thought the angry noise was so you didn't leave your card behind.
  • craftyguy 9y ago
    This is dependent on the machine reading the card, not the card, or technology, itself. This horrid noise is not present on machines used by many vendors..
  • spike021 9y ago
    While I agree, most people don't take their receipts so that idea would probably never work.
  • Cerium 9y ago
    I'd be happy if the text didn't change until it was done. Many of the machines I encounter change the "Wait, don't remove card" text location three or four times, each time you think it is done.
• beedogs 9y ago
  Heh. In 35 years Americans might finally stop writing checks, too.
  • u801e 9y ago
    I would, but there are certain institutions that don't accept any other form of payment other than check or money order. Even if they do accept a credit card payment, they add a 3% or greater convenience fee to the amount.
    • lopmotr 9y ago
      Surely you can do internet banking transfer to the recipient's bank? In New Zealand, we didn't used to have many credit cards so that's how you'd pay your bills, buy a house, pay small businesses, or just about anything that can wait a day.
      • astura 9y ago
        >Surely you can do internet banking transfer to the recipient's bank? No, there isn't really a "standard" to do this. As far as bills go, each company has their own billpay system. Small businesses pretty much all take credit or debit cards now. If they don't you pay by check. I pay my property taxes with a check because if you do an electronic payment with their system they want you to pay like a $3 fee. Buying a house requires you to get a cashier's check. You can do "billpay" online with your bank, but if their systems aren't "hooked up" to the other party's systems the bank will mail a physical check to the other party. None of it is instant or even fast.
    • __david__ 9y ago
      Do you find any that only take check and have to be paid in a timely fashion (like in a line at a store) to complete a transaction? Last time I changed banks (about 6 years ago) I decided to experiment and not order any checks. Every person I've encountered who needs a check will wait for them, so I just add them to bill pay and have the bank deal with printing and mailing them a check. So far I haven't run into a situation where I was cursing myself for not having actual physical checks.
• eadmund 9y ago
  > ShopKeep and Square, two popular small business payment systems, said they do not plan to immediately update their systems to allow retailers to skip signatures on all transactions. (Both currently allow merchants to disable them on transactions below $25.) > “We’ll play it a little bit by ear,” said Michael DeSimone, ShopKeep’s chief executive. “Right now, I don’t think there’s a high level of awareness about this. Let’s get the changes in place and see how they work operationally, and then we’ll adapt.” I can't imagine the hell of a place that must be to work when extending a feature which works at $25 to any sum — or no sum at all — is that hard. I can think of some really good reasons for it to be that difficult, but all of them sound like a terrible working environment.
• SuperGoodJared 9y ago
  What if I like doodling on all those iPad POS systems?
• iosDrone 9y ago
  The article doesn't mention how great this could be for reducing transmission of the common cold! I hate signatures, especially ones at a drugstore where every single person has to use the same digital pen. Since Square is still requiring signatures though, we can add this to the endless list of things that Jack Dorsey is fucking up.
  • subway 9y ago
    So now everyone has to use the same pin pad? Then god forbid they each touch the same door handle on the way out.
• quickthrower2 9y ago
  Wait, what it's 2006?
• paulie_a 9y ago
  It's not like the signature actually mattered. I've literally wrote "blah blah" That is when the signature pad actually works.
  • jwdunne 9y ago
    I've left one unsigned and another had the strip wear off to the point the card says "VOID VOID VOID". Never once stopped me using them. I'm glad for it because my signature isn't exactly consistent. In fact, I don't think the swipe and signature method is generally allowed in the UK.
• bambax 9y ago
  > For nearly a decade, Doug Taylor, a sales manager who travels often for work, has signed credit card receipts with a doodle of a dog wagging its tail. Well, this story/hoax/experiment from the late 90s was at the time the funniest thing I had ever read online: https://web.archive.org/web/20130120184305/http://www.zug.com/pranks/credit_card/ https://web.archive.org/web/20130120184305/http://www.zug.co...
• alkonaut 9y ago
  I once saw a cashier compare the signature on the back of the card (There is a little field for "signature" on the back of credit cards) - to the one I signed. When I noticed I hadn't signed my card he said he couldn't accept my purchase, so I had to sign the card first, then he could compare the signature...
  • jamiethompson 9y ago
    In the UK cards still have a signature strip on the back and if a merchant notices you haven't signed your card they legally have to refuse to accept it. I rarely remember to sign my cards and this tripped me up one time last year when trying to return something to a store which I'd bought online with my credit card. I had to leave the store, buy a pen, sign the card and re-enter the store.
    • alkonaut 9y ago
      > I had to leave the store, buy a pen, sign the card and re-enter the store. That's exactly what I did too. And yes, this was when visiting the UK. I had no idea the strip on the back of the card was for comparison, never seen it used elsewhere. Would be interesting to hear the person who thought that the signature-comparison thing was a good idea explain how they were thinking.
      • Jolter 9y ago
        It's because in some countries, not everyone has an ID card on them at all times. (Backwards, I know, but them's the breaks...)
        • alkonaut 9y ago
          That's why we have PINs. If not everyone can be asked to get ID, and not every store can be asked to get chip+pin gear then stores should still not pretend to do some identification charade based on doodling.
    • 7ewis 9y ago
• mrarjen 9y ago
  Every time I'm in Germany I'm baffled that they use signatures quite often in order to pay... basically copying the signature that's on their cards. It's quite silly as when you'd steal someones card you'd pretty much just be able to use it to pay for things, given you can copy a signature. It's quite the contract with the Netherlands, but then again about 10 or so years ago I wasn't able to identically copy my signature and was unable to get a new bank card... luckily I didn't have this issue online filling out a form.
  • dx034 9y ago
    In Germany, payments with signature are legally just a direct debit (that's the small contract you sign on the bill, the reason there's so much text on there). If the card was stolen, the merchant takes the risk. The account holder can get the money refunded for a very long time (think 3 months but at least several weeks after the monthly statement). Most stores have an automatic system where they require pin if a payment has bounced before and in random intervals. But using the direct debit system instead of PIN is so much cheaper that even higher fraud rates don't matter much.
• jimnotgym 9y ago
  In the UK cards moved to 'chip and pin' in 2006! Fraud in a 'customer present' scenario is very low at our stores. The last fraud in fact was a foreign card that didn't support chip and pin. I can't believe Visa and MasterCard have not made it mandatory world wide... ...except card fraud lossed are recharged to the merchant so perhaps they don't care? Out of interest there is a special exception for disabled people who cannot use a pin pad btw...
  • rollthehard6 9y ago
    And even earlier in other EU countries I imagine, as I was in Luxembourg in 2001 and used pin to pay in supermnarkets with my UK card.
    • hadrien01 9y ago
      Yes, I think it was way earlier than 2006. In France, every card in 1995 had chip and pin.
      • MatthewWilkes 9y ago
        The UK was relatively late to the party, some large retailers here campaigned against it as they were afraid that going online for authorisations would increase the time it took to serve people. I believe that the offline mode was enough to appease them, even now you occasionally run up against offline-only EMV terminals.
      • jimnotgym 9y ago
        I think there were a few years where both chip & pin and signatures were in use, but 2006 was the date that chip and pin was mandatory http://www.theukcardsassociation.org.uk/news/10yearschipandpinnews.asp http://www.theukcardsassociation.org.uk/news/10yearschipandp...
  • ashleyn 9y ago
    AFAIK chip and pin shifts liability for fraud onto the credit customer. While banks may be more than eager to do so, they may also be wary of a customer backlash over this.
• ChuckMcM 9y ago
  For a long time I would put 'see id' on the signature line of the credit card suggesting that if someone where trying to use it the vendor would ask to see identification and that would alert them if it wasn't me using the card. And then it became clear it was trivial to just print a new card and I stopped even caring about the signature. And now a squiggle is all I leave if they insist. So now I find I can get impatient when someone is painfully trying to recreate their exact signature using a digital signature pad that could never possibly have the resolution to do it justice.
  • recursive 9y ago
    I haven't signed a credit card in about a decade. I sign the receipts, but not the cards. That's got to be thousands of transactions by now. No one cares.
• emmelaich 9y ago
  I haven't used a signature for a credit card transaction in at least 10 years. I was somewhat amazed to see it was still I thing when I visited the US recently. Strictly speaking it's still a thing in Australia, but there are always better options -- chip, pin.
• combatentropy 9y ago
  "Mikiah Westbrooks, the owner of Brix, a wine bar in Detroit, said she worried that skipping signatures will affect her workers' tips." May tips disappear next.
  • justinator 9y ago
    May a livable wage working an industry job happen right before.
    • icebraining 9y ago
      For cheap restaurants, where servers are likely earning minimum wage, the tips are a gift to the employer, not to them, since the employer can discount the tips from the wage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage_in_the_United_Stat...
      • alkonaut 9y ago
        Maybe at the same time as the US lives through the 20th centurty revolution of livable wages, something could be enacted that prevents employers from stealing from employees?
  • toephu2 9y ago
    Yes can we please get rid of tipping and pay waiters and staff what they should be earning? Build the price into the menu and let the market decide the price. Too expensive? You will lose customers. Too cheap? You will have lines out the door and you know you can increase prices. The rest of the world does not tip (Europe & Asia). Only in North America is this awkward tipping practice still a thing.
    • rokhayakebe 9y ago
      Personally I like tipping. I think people should still be paid well, but let me tip on top of it if I wish.
• saagarjha 9y ago
  This is great, since there were certain stores that would require my signature when I was using Apple Pay but not when I used a credit card. Completely negated the convenience benefit of contactless payment.
  • melvinmt 9y ago
    That is actually very funny. Silicon Valley material.
• jiveturkey 9y ago
  so what happened to chip+signature? now it’s chip only? i guess physical theft isn’t a thing they care much about anymore.
  • ThrustVectoring 9y ago
    The signature being wrong doesn't actually make the card unusable, and there's statutory liability limits based on reporting the card missing/stolen. There's virtually zero difference for the issuer between chip+signature and chip-only.
• latchkey 9y ago
  I've been using a big smiley face or stickfigure for years now. Always gets a smile out of the people accepting it.
• billysielu 9y ago
  This is really about who's responsible if someone else uses your card. The point of chip-and-pin was to shift responsibility for card security to you. If your card is used in a chip-and-pin scenario it must be your fault for not keeping the pin secure. Nearly every chip-and-pin device has a CCTV camera pointed at it, so it's impossible for you to avoid someone seeing your pin.
• Jolter 9y ago
  I found it odd that Mastercard would say "[...] it has been wanting to make the change for years, but held off until cards embedded with computer chips became common." Whose responsibility is it to make those cards more common, if not Mastercard's? In Sweden, cards have only been issued with chips since the early 2000s, and consequently merchants only very rarely use signature purchases. Why they didn't push this sooner in the US is a riddle wrappen in a mystery... The only place I've seen signatures used recently around here have been in busy bars/nightclubs, where stressed-out bartenders don't want to wait for online validation. I guess they get few enough fraud attempts at cocktails that they don't care too much about validation.
  • bantunes 9y ago
    It might be that non-chip CCs had long expiry dates and only now they're being replaced?
    • stevesimmons 9y ago
      This is not a new situation... I was involved with Australia's chip-and-pin switch in 2006. At the time, we were amazed how slow USA was getting rid of magstripe cards and signatures. And that was 12 years ago...
  • halestock 9y ago
    I'd wager it's less an issue of the cards being commonplace, but instead the card readers and processing companies. I still regularly encounter stores which either don't have a card reader that can accept a chip, or there's a sign indicating that it's not enabled yet.
  • jdmichal 9y ago
    > Whose responsibility is it to make those cards more common, if not Mastercard's? The issuers. Of course, Mastercard has some influence over them... But they certainly can't unilaterally dictate conditions to them beyond whatever contract they signed. There's also the fact that, even if issuers handed them out, the machines and merchant processors also have to support them. Which was something that still hasn't completely happened in the US, even with the networks pushing as hard as they could. (Moving fraud liability to the merchants is about the biggest move they could make.)
• homero 9y ago
  Can we stop signing checks sometime?
• sandworm101 9y ago
  Signatures have never had anything to do with identity. They are a physical manifistation of ones willingness to contract. They draw the line between drafts and final contract language. The action counts, not the image. That signatures are somwtimes compared is secondary, akin to comparing paper types or forensic prints. Contracts are not like a signed bat. They do not become worthless because you forget to cross your T.
• jsemrau 9y ago
  ARE extinct. I am visiting Australia right now and I have not signed a CC transaction in 10 days
  • toomanybeersies 9y ago
    I live in Australia and I haven't even signed my signed my credit card. Technically I'm supposed to, but I have never had to sign for a transaction in the past decade that I've been using cards.
• rswail 9y ago
  So this comes up every time the US starts to approach the way credit and debit cards are processed in the rest of the world. EMV (Euro/Master/Visa) defines the standard for a chip card. [1] The cards can be configured as chip+signature, chip+pin or both. The priority ordering can be pin only, sig only, pin then sig or sig then pin (and a bunch of other esoteric rules). Paywave (VISA) and Paypass (Mastercard) are contactless standards for EMV transactions. The rules for chip+pin transfer the liability to the merchant (and the merchant bank) for fraudulent use. The liability moves from the card issuing bank. It's a "stick" to make the merchants upgrade. That's why merchants are going to at least chip+signature (ie EMV chip reduces fraud). Moving to chip+PIN reduces fraud even further. The card issuing banks tend to introduce rules about how safe your PIN is and apply rules to your PIN to stop things like repetitive numbers (eg all 1s), sequences, birthdate matches etc. Chip + PIN was introduced in the EU and other more advanced than the US banking environments (ie, everywhere) a number of years ago. The "liability shift" for Mastercard happened ~2006, Visa was ~2010, later in some places (eg AU was 2015). It is only just happening in the US (according to Wikipedia it will be completed by 2020-10-01). Paywave/Paypass implement new rules on when a PIN is required. In AU it is $100. If the amount is below that, then the liability is accepted by the merchant bank (ie the merchant will get paid). If it is >$100, then a PIN is required for the merchant bank to accept the transaction. In Australia, if you report your card lost/stolen, then you are not responsible for Paywave/pass transactions. If you don't ("an unreasonably long time"), then you are, unless the card issuer (your bank) can chargeback the merchant (ie <120 days). This applies to the Credit Card networks (Amex/MC/VISA/Discover/JCB/Union etc). MC and Visa also have "debit" cards that use the same network and are treated basically the same for the merchant. There are other payment networks (eg in AU there is EFTPOS) which is an AU bank owned network that basically does direct debit from cardholder to merchant online. So if you actually insert your card in the reader, you'll get the choice of "CR" (ie the MC/VISA network, SAV (EFTPOS) or CHQ (EFTPOS)). So an "ANZ Bank Mastercard" can have 3 different accounts attached, the Mastercard CC account, and two different savings accounts. No one really has a "cheque" account anymore. The banks also issue Mastercard/VISA debit cards (that also offer CC/SAV/CHQ, but CC actually means SAV) and their own debit cards (EFTPOS only). EFTPOS has much lower fees for both merchants and the banks. That's why Apple Pay hasn't been accepted yet by 3 of the 4 major AU banks, because they don't want to lose their sweet EFTPOS network or pay more to MC and VISA. They also don't want to pay Apple (or Google) more fees in the interchange. For a while, supermarkets were making people with MC/VISA debit cards insert their cards and only allow them to use the SAV/CHQ options so that they didn't have to pay CC transaction fees for EFTPOS debit transactions. Anyway, the summary of all this is that moving the US away from signatures is painful because of the disjointed and irrational US banking and payment systems as well as the baked in insistence by users on signatures and paper checks (not cheques, 'cos nowhere that spells it correctly still uses them much :) ). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMV
• yakshaving_jgt 9y ago
  Good riddance. Signatures are stupid anyway. Regards, A man who currently has a broken wrist.
• bernardlunn 9y ago
  America is so stuck in legacy tech. Nobody checks signatures. Strong Factor Authentication requires min 2 of 3. India is leapfrogging to biometrics using Aadhar. Europe is current with chip and pin. America is in quill pen stage
  • 05 9y ago
    Chip and pin isn't current; CDCVM is. Some european countries are still lagging on that front.
    • sourcesmith 9y ago
      Having to buy your own till is progress?
  • xPhobophobia 9y ago
    Ironically, increasing security like this is at the cost of privacy. Biometrics are nearly the last source of private data not fully tapped.
  • chiph 9y ago
    Yeah, I'm not going to support biometrics. The very last thing I want is to have the data identifying my iris pattern stolen.
  • vorpalhex 9y ago
    Biometrics are terrible, especially if they ever become compromised. You can change a pin code or a password much more easily than you can change your eyeball or fingerprint.
  • artmageddon 9y ago
    > America is so stuck in legacy tech. Nobody checks signatures. The USPS sadly still forces credit card users to have signatures on the back. They don't check signatures against the PIN pad / signed receipts, but the clerk will either yell at you or refuse the transaction if you have "Ask For Drivers License" on the back of the card. This has happened to me on more than one occasion.
• nemoniac 9y ago
  Why was "...in the U.S.?" removed from the title?
• jakecopp 9y ago
  We Australians are two steps ahead - I barely even use a pin now! I use PayWave (NFC) nearly all the time and often businesses find it strange when you want to insert or swipe your card.
  • stephen_g 9y ago
    You generally still need a PIN for payments over $100 though. But in general you can't actually sign anymore, you have to either use PayWave or chip and pin.
• tetrep 9y ago
  I've been drawing a horizontal line, sometimes with a slight arch, for years now. I almost never get a reaction and when I do, it is at most a laugh or giggle. Nobody cares (not that they should). Anything I scrawl is (more or less), by fiat, my signature. I'm glad we can finally stop wasting time (and resources, for physical signatures). This is especially fun with e-signatures in California: “Electronic signature” means an electronic sound, symbol, or process attached to or logically associated with an electronic record and executed or adopted by a person with the intent to sign the electronic record. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=1633&lawCode=CIV https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
  • TallGuyShort 9y ago
    I've been legibly writing "Fake Name" for years now, and no merchant has ever called me on it.
  • letsgetphysITal 9y ago
    I write "Check I.D.". Merchants have typically been good at asking for some, especially the older ones. Teens and trainees tend to mumble and just process it anyway. The thought process is that my UK drivers license has my picture, full name, and signature. The merchant looks at the ID and sees my photo next to my name, checks it with the name on the card to see if they match, then checks the signature against that on the ID. Unless a thief has the same name as me, they can't use the card as either the photo or the name won't match. The signature doesn't matter as it will be caught in fraud alerting / rejected by the bank.
    • kstrauser 9y ago
      One problem with this is that your credit card isn't technically valid unless it's signed with your actual signature. Piss off the wrong clerk who's having a bad day, and it would be completely within their right to deny the sale (or car or hotel rental).
      • letsgetphysITal 9y ago
• jdlyga 9y ago
  Forget about cards, there's a ton of restaurants and stores in NYC that only accept cash due to the transaction fees.
  • coldtea 9y ago
    And they could be forced to change in a heartbeat if a law passes...
• MisterTea 9y ago
  A friend signs all of his transactions with "poop" as it is his way of demonstrating that signatures are a complete waste of time.
• ireadfaces 9y ago
  In india, a pin is mandatory for all the purchases even when there were no chip cards. Uber had some trouble because it could not charge credit cards like they do in US, as our cards needed two factor auth.
• CodeTheInternet 9y ago
  Somewhat related, instead of signing the back of your credit card write "ASK FOR ID". Many merchants that otherwise wouldn't ask but look at the back instinctively tend to ask when they see it. I reinforce the behavior by thanking them. The only problem I've encountered is some USPS offices refuse to run a card without a signature on the back.
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• Simulacra 9y ago
  I've noticed the chip and pin systems getting much faster. Safeway in the DC area had a sign that they're speeding it up, and it was really insert, pause, remove. More like swiping.
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