Shopping is about to get a little quicker and easier. Mastercard, Discover and American Express will no long require signatures at store checkouts. Visa is expected to join them by the end of this month. This means that it’ll be up to the store itself to decide whether to require signatures at checkout.
“In our digital, fast-paced marketplace, consumers appreciate any opportunity to save time. This is why Mastercard led the charge to officially ‘retire’ cardholder signatures from store receipts,” said Linda Kirkpatrick, executive vice president, U.S. Market Development at Mastercard. “Merchants recognize that cardholder signatures have limited use, and are embracing this change to create efficiency for their customers.”
With new digital security techniques and the vast majority of people having chip based cards, signatures have become one of the least secured ways of preventing fraud. The ideal scenario to prevent fraud would be the chip and pin authentication (like we have at ATM machines).
Signatures weren’t preventing fraud to begin with so this change will speed up checkout lines without risking your financial security.