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

nytimes.com

351–360 of 541 posts

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

#351

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

Ironically, increasing security like this is at the cost of privacy. Biometrics are nearly the last source of private data not fully tapped.

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

#352

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…

> The only things that are checked are the digits of the amount, and the account number. YMMV. Simple won't let me deposit a check made out to "Me and Wife" in my personal account - I can only deposit it in our joint. They'll permit me to deposit "Me OR Wife".

Yeah, I'm really baffled as to why people write checks this way, I've schooled a few people on this - always write Person 1 OR Person 2, that way either of them can handle it the way that make most sense for them. Whenever I pointed out the issue with writing "and," I always get "oh, I didn't know that." To me that's obvious?

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

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It benefits only consumers, while costing the banks and payment providers Hogwash. Yes I know all bankers live in extinct volcanoes but one thing they know a lot about is money. It is ridiculously expensive to support the US's conservatism when it comes to finance. The lack of chip and pin pales into insignificance compared to their addiction to paper checks, for example. It would be completely in the banks' intere…

> The lack of chip and pin pales into insignificance compared to their addiction to paper checks, for example.

Paper checks are indeed a silly cost, but NFC provides banks no gain over chip. Chip provides gain over magnet stripe by basically rendering skimmers ineffective, but only basically in that credit card fraud is still a big business. Instead of skimmers, you use trojans or data leaks. Physical credit cards also sell very cheap on the black market.

In other words, NFC benefits only consumers, not banks. Chip benefits banks a little bit.

> if everyone moved to internet banking, NFC cards etc

Those are very different things. Internet banking benefits banks directly because they can shut down local branches and screw over customers (which they do here—I have to drive to a different city to insert cash, and can only do so within very limited hours).

NFC has no benefit to them (and might slightly increase fraud that the bank will have to cover by allowing ~$40 withdrawals made wirelessly from quite a far distance). Chip presents a pretty tiny benefit to them.

And most certainly, if you have a customer that already use a magnet stripe credit card, giving them an NFC card will result in instant adoption of the feature. We had some statistics when the feature rolled out—it was adopted by everyone with a supported card on the spot. It's much different when you're trying to change a check user to be a credit card user, but that might be more of an issue with the consumer experience with the bank—credit and debit cards over there sound so cumbersome compared to our system where the bank issues both credit and debit cards tied to your account. We don't have the "benefit" card mess.

It's a bit too easy to blame user inertia.

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

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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...

Can I submit that with my expense report to get reimbursed for my business expenses?

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

#356
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's especially a mystery because even developments in payments from the US (eg Apple Pay) seem more widely adopted where I am (Aus) than in the US. Anyone with some insight as to why want to chip in?

> ... chip in Unintentional pun. The US public seems to have a huge reluctance to use the chips in the cards too. It's swipe and sign. (I'm also from Australia and signing for a credit card purchase went away decades ago. PayWave is really popular, my 89 yo mother loves it.)

Most chip readers in the US are incredibly slow. Like 10+ seconds just top read the card. There are faster authentication schemes that some of the readers use, but it's rare that using the chip is very fast, while swiping is always instant.

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

#357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tipping still happens in Europe and SE Asia it's just not silly like North America. In the UK we'd leave a few pounds typically, let's say table bill was 47gbp, you have be a shameless mingebag to collect the 3gbp change if you were happy with the meal and service. But we don't subscribe to the non sense of 10% tip if unhappy, 15-20% if happy, if crap you don't leave a tip or pay service charge.

Most importantly, you don't have to tip in the UK. It's appreciated but literally no one minds if you don't.

I've never had a meal out in the UK (with different people, family, work, etc) where a tip wasn't left, unless possibly when service was really bad.

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

#358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In Brazil wireless credit card terminals are also very common, and all I've seen use cell phone radios, so they work anywhere a cell phone from the same telco would work. Once in a while you still see the old wired terminals (which use wired phone lines), they are slower since they have to dial to the backend. And of course there are the terminals wired directly to a POS terminal (but places with these usually have wireless credit card terminals as a backup).

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

#359
post #58

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 th…

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.

>Where does it say on the receipt that I am agreeing to the cardholder agreement?

It used to be standard ~15-20 years ago. I don't see that verbiage any more.

Fun fact, when I worked in retail in the late 90s, the full card number was not really treated as a secret that needed to be protected - the registers we had had a full audit trail printed on a receipt roll inside the register, every time any transaction was inputted the receipt roll would print the details of the transaction. The full card number was first printed on that. Then it was printed on the signature paper. The receipt itself had the last 4 only.

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

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most importantly, you don't have to tip in the UK. It's appreciated but literally no one minds if you don't.

I've never had a meal out in the UK (with different people, family, work, etc) where a tip wasn't left, unless possibly when service was really bad.

Sure, and I leave tips the vast majority of the time too - but I've had situations where I had no cash on me, the card machine didn't accept a tip, so I just left without feeling bad about it, it's not a big deal.
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