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In the UK, I don't think you can opt to sign instead of enter a PIN if it's a PIN terminal and your card has a PIN set. Only if it doesn't have a PIN (as with A

In the UK, I don't think you can opt to sign instead of enter a PIN if it's a PIN terminal and your card has a PIN set. Only if it doesn't have a PIN (as with American cards) will it then automatically ask for a signature. Isn't allowing the user to opt to just bypass the PIN a bit of a security hole? There are a handful of places in the UK that don't have PIN terminals at all and do classic swipe-and-sign transactions, though. The one I encounter most commonly is the onboard cafe car on Great Western Railway trains.

htgb 9y ago
> Isn't allowing the user to opt to just bypass the PIN a bit of a security hole? That's a valid point of view, but I actually believe that the business is taking (the bulk of) the risk. In case of a chargeback, the business has to prove that I made the purchase, and a PIN is better evidence that I actually made it compared to just a signature. This means that businesses might accept signature only for relatively low amounts. Indeed, it's not uncommon that neither is needed for amounts under a couple of lunches or so, to make lunch queues quicker. I assume the throughput is sometimes worth the risk.