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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

#111

Post by all_blue_chucks »

walrus01 wrote: post #107
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…

Fun fact. You can theoretically write a USA legal bank check on the back side of a napkin and it will be honored. As you point out, it just needs the correct bank routing number and account number.

As long as it's not fraudulent, it's all legal. But will a bank take it? That's an entirely different question.

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

#112

Post by all_blue_chucks »

blueside wrote: post #8

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)

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?

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

#113

Post by walrus01 »

yodon wrote: post #110
walrus01 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact. You can theoretically write a USA legal bank check on the back side of a napkin and it will be honored. As you point out, it just needs the correct bank routing number and account number.

Most banks now have clauses allowing them to reject non-standard checks. Too many people writing “pay to the order of” on coconuts and pigs and other non-machine-readable items

I'd like to see a method to get MICR ink onto the side of a coconut.

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

#114

Post by proofOfDeposit »

skookumchuck wrote: post #57
matte_black wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened next? Don’t want to try it.

I wouldn't accept their evasions and eventually they gave up and credited me.

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.

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

#115

Post by sleet »

jdavis703 wrote: post #91
sleet wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you still live with your parents or rent from a slum lord who only takes cash? Most landlords seem to only take cash or checks, it's really only the national apartment companies that take online payments.

I live in New Zealand. Everything is done by electronic fund transfers. I have been a renter, now I'm a landlord. I have also run businesses.

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

#116

Post by jkaplowitz »

jjeaff wrote: post #58
stevep98 wrote: post #29

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.

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.

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

#117

Post by spacehome »

crazygringo wrote: post #47
sleet wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Over the past 6 years, literally the only thing I've used my checkbook for was security deposit and first month's rent. But my last two apartments required cashier's checks for both... so honestly, I don't expect to write another check my whole life.

Landlords only want cashier's checks if they don't trust you. If they don't trust you, they're less likely to rent to you. So requiring cashier's checks is uncommon, barring some extenuating circumstance like you've previously written a bad check or been late.

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

#118

Post by sleet »

skookumchuck wrote: post #62
sleet wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've been going back to written checks lately because of huge timewasting problems with electronic billpay systems - problems like the bank says they transmitted the money go talk to the vendor. The vendor says they never got it, go talk to the bank. Around and around and around. In the past, I'd wave around the cancelled check and resolve it quickly. With ebanking, it's hours and hours on the phone and sitting in th…

Sorry to hear your woes. Most inter-bank transfers are settled within the hour here. Overnight at most. Hopefully your systems improve.

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

#119

Post by nness »

all_blue_chucks wrote: post #112
blueside wrote: post #8

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)

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?

[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...

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

#120

Post by amyjess »

supertrope wrote: post #100
baddox wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

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