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It's been about a month since American Express and Mastercard decided to stop requiring signatures for EMV chip credit cards. Now Visa is joining their ranks, making signatures optional for chipped transactions in North America.
"Visa is committed to delivering secure, fast and convenient payments at the point of sale," said VIsa's Dan Sanford in a statement. "Our focus is on continually evolving the market towards dynamic authentication methods such as EMV chip, as well as investing in emerging capabilities that leverage advanced analytics and biometrics. We believe making the signature requirement optional for EMV chip-enabled merchants is the responsible next step to enhance security and convenience at the point of sale."
Source: https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/12/visa-signatures-optional-credit-cards-emv/
(Score: 3, Informative) by pipedwho on Tuesday January 16 2018, @12:39AM
Not in Australia. The banks take on the risk of transactions below a certain value for 'Tap and Go' (wireless use of the card). That limit is usually $100. This is to allow people to use the wireless cards for many small transactions without the slow down of entering PINs (and getting them wrong). It's amazing how fast the checkouts are at cafes and other small shops.
From a security standpoint this may not seem like a good idea, but the banks can easily flick the threshold back to zero it was losing them too much money due to electronic fraud. Since the value is limited and small transactions are piecemeal by nature, someone electronically copying wireless card identities en-masse won't create a sudden catastrophic loss that can't be dealt with by temporarily enforcing PINs on certain cards while they sort things out.
The signature requirement has always been a joke, because most people's signatures hardly like the signature on the back of the card. It's probably always been about the banks having a way to stick it to merchants that are on the receiving end of a bad transaction.