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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
by 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 agoIn 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.