A relic of a different time. Credit card signatures are now considered an antique way of proving one’s identity, and now major credit card brands are also acknowledging this fact. Signing for a purchase has its roots in the first half of the twentieth century when charge cards were popularized as a form of merchants extending credit to consumers to encourage shopping at their business. But now we live in an age where we have new technologies for verification that are more secure and easier to provide. Signatures are now being supplanted by personal PIN numbers and Near-Field Communication (NFC) transactions that often don’t require any further personal verification.
Credit card signatures have slowly been phased out over recent years as cardholders globally have been issued refined EMV enabled cards. This change was a slow-moving one in the US, especially after EMV enabled chip cards became the new standard in Asia, Canada, and Europe. Over the past decade, credit card networks have stopped requiring signatures on smaller purchases. But the many varying and contradictory rules by all the different card brands was confusing for merchants, who often chose to simply require signatures just to be safe.
Now with swiped transactions being slowly phased out, and merchants being penalized for not using EMV technology, signatures are officially being phased out entirely. With new types of transactions such as tap and pay and chip and pin becoming more popular, and moving toward becoming the new standard in the US. As a result fewer customers are being asked to sign a receipt or screen when authorizing a transaction. Now the credit card brands are endorsing this payment trend and cutting out the requirement for signatures in certain countries.
The benefits of removing signature requirements from transactions are helping you save time, serve more customers, and preventing fraud. When you rely on NFC and EMV technology for your transactions, as soon as the terminal displays an approval, the transaction is complete, your customer can exit the checkout, and you can move on to helping the next customer. No signatures also means no signed receipts, as long as your terminal is EMV enabled you no longer need to worry about storing transaction receipts.
Conclusively, it will still be up to the business owner to decide if they require a customer signature to authorize a transaction. With PaidYet you can too accept payments with no signature required. Sign up for an account at no cost!