Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 541 posts

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

#391

Post by tetrep »

I've been drawing a horizontal line, sometimes with a slight arch, for years now. I almost never get a reaction and when I do, it is at most a laugh or giggle. Nobody cares (not that they should). Anything I scrawl is (more or less), by fiat, my signature.

I'm glad we can finally stop wasting time (and resources, for physical signatures).

This is especially fun with e-signatures in California: “Electronic signature” means an electronic sound, symbol, or process attached to or logically associated with an electronic record and executed or adopted by a person with the intent to sign the electronic record.

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

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

#392

Post by rkeene2 »

dfox wrote: post #327
rkeene2 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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), o…

There is definitely nothing that prevents another applet (JavaCard, not PKCS#11 -- that's just a generic interface) from running on smartcards currently running the EMV applet. Or any other smartcard from running more than one applet -- this is a result of ISO7816 more than EMV.

But my point is that if EMV had chosen to use X.509 instead of inventing their own certificate format then we could re-use the existing infrastructure with zero cost.

Passing arbitrary APDUs from webpages to your card isn't a great idea and it will be SLOW since it will require multiple round-trips -- it's already slow enough just reading objects from smartcards. This is the mechanism used by Citrix/MS Remote Desktop, which is to forward a PC/SC connection -- this has a disadvantage that the remote side must have drivers and is also real slow, but the advantage that the resource can be used for anything, just like it were local.

For what it's worth, I'm the author of some smartcard middleware (CACKey) and have worked with the EMV specification and EMV applets to a lesser degree.

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

#393

Post by artmageddon »

bernardlunn wrote: post #344

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

> America is so stuck in legacy tech. Nobody checks signatures.

The USPS sadly still forces credit card users to have signatures on the back. They don't check signatures against the PIN pad / signed receipts, but the clerk will either yell at you or refuse the transaction if you have "Ask For Drivers License" on the back of the card. This has happened to me on more than one occasion.

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

#394

Post by TallGuyShort »

tetrep wrote: post #391

I've been drawing a horizontal line, sometimes with a slight arch, for years now. I almost never get a reaction and when I do, it is at most a laugh or giggle. Nobody cares (not that they should). Anything I scrawl is (more or less), by fiat, my signature . I'm glad we can finally stop wasting time (and resources, for physical signatures). This is especially fun with e-signatures in California: “Electronic signature”…

I've been legibly writing "Fake Name" for years now, and no merchant has ever called me on it.

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

#395

Post by criddell »

lh7777 wrote: post #374
criddell wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just looking for a chip-and-pin card that I (as an American) could get for traveling to the UK and apparently there really isn't much out there. I think all of the US cards that support chip and pin prioritize signature over pin. I also found this Visa page explaining that PIN isn't used in the US because it's too expensive: https://usa.visa.com/visa-everywhere/security/the-cost-of-pi...

FirstTech's credit card is PIN priority. I've only used it in Canada so far, but it works as expected there.

Do you know if you have to join the credit union to get a card, or do they issue them to anybody?

Edit: I just contact them and you do indeed have to become a member first.

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

#396

Post by TallGuyShort »

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?

I traveled all over England this last year with a Chase Visa. No problem the majority of places, but definitely a few places that were inconvenienced by having to pull a signature pad out from under a pile of stuff because no one's used it in months, and a few places that asked me to just pay in cash. I would expect London itself to see enough foreign traffic to be more accepting in this regard, though.

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

#397

Post by davepage »

criddell wrote: post #368
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 was just looking for a chip-and-pin card that I (as an American) could get for traveling to the UK and apparently there really isn't much out there. I think all of the US cards that support chip and pin prioritize signature over pin. I also found this Visa page explaining that PIN isn't used in the US because it's too expensive: https://usa.visa.com/visa-everywhere/security/the-cost-of-pi...

FWIW, I set an ATM PIN for a US issued CC and found the PIN worked for retail terminals in NZ. YMMV

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

#398

Post by gst »

MatthewWilkes wrote: post #296
gst wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the restaurant. Most of the times the terminal doesn't support PINs and so it falls back to signatures. But some restaurants use PIN-capable terminals in which case that issue occurs.

I think it also depends on what buttons they press. I believe if they select credit card it forces it to be a signature.

That's only for US debit cards where a debit transaction requires a PIN code, but a credit transaction prefers signatures. For credit cards with PIN preference it shouldn't make a difference, as it's up to the card to decide which mode to use (based on the options that are supported by the terminal).

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

#399

Post by TallGuyShort »

thomasahle wrote: post #297
rokhayakebe wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I like tipping. I think people should still be paid well, but let me tip on top of it if I wish.

It's actually somewhat infantilizing to tip someone, unless they need it to be paid. You would never give a lawyer, consultant or someone else "respected" in society "2 dollars to buy something nice". Tipping is a very in the face sign of inequality and really needs to die (as soon as the inequality is gone of course).

To be honest I've never had a lawyer or doctor do a job for me and leave me thinking, "oh wow, you really went above and beyond for me and did a great job that left me in a great mood all day!" I had a guy in London who parked our car and carried our luggage up to our room exceptionally fast and spent several minutes giving us great recommendations on where to eat and how to make the best of our time in the city. Tip.
Post reply on HN