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

nytimes.com

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

#321

Post by kozhevnikov »

criddell wrote: post #315
jimnotgym wrote: post #240

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 w…

I'm visiting London this summer (I'm from Texas). Normally, I pay for everything with American Express. Would you recommend I get a different card for London? I wonder if there's a US card that support chip and pin?

A lot of businesses in the UK/Europe do not accept American Express due to higher fees. You would be better off getting a different card preferably that supports contactless payments so you could use it on the tube and buses instead of an Oyster card (remember to touch it on the way out as well).

https://tfl.gov.uk/fares-and-payments/contactless

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

#322

Post by astura »

skookumchuck wrote: post #17

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…

Yeah, I once wrote my landlord a check and totally forgot to sign it. The bank cashed it just fine, I was surprised.

It also depends on the teller, how much of a hardass they are going to be about cashing it. I guess I don't know what the protocol is for for mobile deposit, they may or may not have manual review.

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

#323

Post by baud147258 »

htgb wrote: post #304
arghwhat wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DK never even had credit card signatures. Our systems support it for foreigners, but I was so confused the first time I saw that. Everyone uses NFC credit cards now (and if the amount is over ~$40 or a daily limit has been reached, with pin). For us, chip and pin is basically deprecated, and no one has used magnetic strips in a decade.

In Sweden, signatures are available opt-in, but many stores get confused if you press the button for it. –"The system says 'signature needed', was that intentional?" It _is_ practical though, if you forget your pin code and need to pay something. It used to be very common in bars/clubs too, at least before contact-free cards, to speed up the payments.

I don't if that's even possible here in France. At least I've never see anything that hint it's the case.

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

#324

Post by goalieca »

te_chris wrote: post #280
gst wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

In Europe/UK they just bring the card machine to your table.

Yeah, When the pin first became popular in canada the technology was already wireless. They have a pretty good range too and i've never had a problem even on the largest of patios or the deepest corner of any underground hipster joint.

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

#325

Post by Hydraulix989 »

hellweaver666 wrote: post #272
Hydraulix989 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Zojirushi rice cookers also play you a song after they are done making you rice.

My Samsung washing machine plays a little ditty when a wash cycle completes. It's actually kind of annoying! :D

Samsung is Korean.

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

#326

Post by joncrane »

cylinder wrote: post #301
pjc50 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FT suggests this is a regulation vs competition problem, where regulation has "won": https://www.ft.com/content/03a1f4b0-06d3-11e4-ba32-00144feab... It's a bit of a prisoners-dilemma thing: new technology can only be adopted with sufficient coordination, but each individual party is only interested in cooperating if they think they will "win" from it more than their competitors . The US seems to be a very bad pla…

I don’t know, Australia’s got only four banks which dominate the market and yet they are pretty aggressive in innovative products. We just got instant bank transfers and that required cooperation amongst them to adopt standards and protocols.

To me, the culture of Australia has always been that being clever and helpful trumps being richer or beating the other guy. So there is value in companies being known as offering clever, helpful solutions.

In the US it's almost exclusively about beating the other guy.

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

#327

Post by dfox »

rkeene2 wrote: post #22
pmorici wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This already exists. If EMV specified an X.509 certificate instead of a proprietary one, then we could be doing card-present transactions over the Internet right now thanks to TLS client certificates.

The RSA certificates used in EMV are not used to authorize transactions, but only to authenticate card to the terminal (and optionally to encrypt communication between pin pad and the card). Only effect of using full-blown X.509 for that would be that the certificates will be three times larger. Transactions are "signed" with issuer-specific symmetric algorithm (the specification AFAIK recommends CBC-MAC and HMAC), original motivation for this constructions seems to be backward compatibility in the sense that the algorithm can be designed such that it produces 8 digit decimal numbers that can then pass through various backend systems in field originally intended for swipe card online authorization code.

And by the way nothing technically prevents the issuers to combine EMV application with some PKCS#11 applet with X.509 certificate on the same physical card. EMV is in fact to some extent explicitly overdesigned to allow not only this but even multiple EMV "cards" on same physical chip.

One interesting idea would be to do EMV transaction over the internet by just forwarding the PDUs sent to the card over the internet, but it has lots of subtle usability and security issues to be really practical.

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

#328

Post by [deleted] »

sleet wrote: post #42
skookumchuck wrote: post #17

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…

It amazes me that cheques are still used. I'm 36 and I've never issued a cheque, I think I was issued a cheque book with my first account but never used it.

[deleted]

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

#329

Post by jimnotgym »

marbletiles wrote: post #319
criddell wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm visiting London this summer (I'm from Texas). Normally, I pay for everything with American Express. Would you recommend I get a different card for London? I wonder if there's a US card that support chip and pin?

You'll find a number of places that don't take American Express, so have an alternative with you. If you have Apple or Android Pay, that'll cover you for most purchases under £100 (under £30 in some places with outdated tech).

> under £30 in some places with outdated tech

under £30 with our brand new chip an pin machines too. I am supposed to make a load of calls this week to try and resolve it...

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

#330

Post by yalooze »

criddell wrote: post #315
jimnotgym wrote: post #240

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 w…

I'm visiting London this summer (I'm from Texas). Normally, I pay for everything with American Express. Would you recommend I get a different card for London? I wonder if there's a US card that support chip and pin?

All stores still accept signature payments. Although not everywhere accepts AMEX due to the higher merchant fees.
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