Mastercard, Visa, Discover, and American Express all announced a few months ago that signatures will no longer be required at store checkouts in the US beginning April 2018. These changes go into effect tomorrow for Mastercard, as per this press release. Discover and American Express are reported as making the change today as well, while Visa will institute the switch sometime later this month.
In reality, it’s up to the stores whether or not they want to collect signatures. The store might decide they want to continue with signatures – something unlikely, but the bigger issue is that the point-of-sale systems need to be updated to stop asking for signatures. I expect bigger chains to update their systems within the next month or so. Smaller stores could drag along with signatures for a while until they kick the habit.
Even payment processors could get in the way. ShopKeep and Square, two popular small business payment systems, are reported saying they do not plan to immediately update their systems to allow retailers to skip signatures, deferring until there’s a higher level of awareness about the change.
The Frys Food store (part of Kroger), still requires signatures. No one at the store could tell me why
DP:
Northern California Safeway doesn’t require signature anymore. (It did yesterday)
My purchase of 10 Two $100 VGC went much faster than before.
Unfortunately it’ll probably take years for fast food restaurants and coffee shops to switch to no signature required since a lot of them try to guilt you into tipping them after you use your card
I went to a Chinese restaurant last night. Paid with Mastercard. They still had me sign the receipt.
This is covered in the DoC article… it will take months and years before some stores stop asking for it. Some may never stop. It’s not like the CC companies just throw a switch and change all the processors and stores software.
I want the US to adopt true chip+PIN like the rest of the world.
My local HyVee (grocery store) stopped requiring signatures for chip cards a while back for lower dollar amounts, but still asked for signatures when buying a $500 gift card.
Of course, they sometimes still ask to see the physical card and my drivers license to match them up which I think might be in violation of the credit card agreement, but I’m ok with it as long as they keep taking credit cards for VGCs. 😀
So if a store/restaurant asks for signature, am I allowed to say no?
I assume not having to sign only applies when your card is chipped. Which makes me wonder how long before you can’t swipe cards.
The not signing is for every transaction type – chip, swipe, virtual wallet, manual number entry, etc.
Swiping will probably always be allowed. It’s mainly related to who’s liable for fraud – the merchant or card issuer. But as you think some prepaid cards don’t even have chips, and have expiration dates many years out swiping will be around for a looooong time.
Look, imprints are still allowed, and they have been around practically forever.
Very sad day in CC history. Now any thief can steal your cards and use without that to disprove you made the fraud charge.
Signatures have never been able to disprove fraud solely… My signature is an “X”.
I don’t think you understand how things work. I work in the industry and I can tell you almost everything now is from data breaches and paying for things/giving your card # to shady websites/entities that sell your info. They then make their own cards and hit it as hard as possible. I hope your comment is sarcasm. Signatures never were worth anything.
I don’t think you understand how things work. The post you replied to was sarcasm.
I’m not even sure why merchants bother anyway when they allow a squiggly line to be used as signature.
I think this may have partially rolled out already today. Yesterday I had to sign for my OD purchases. Today, I didn’t.
Funny, just signed at OD today. Maybe in another decade we’ll start hearing about chip + PIN in America !