Visa Is Eliminating Signature Requirements In North America

OMG, don't any of you watch American Greed? John Bolaris had over $40k of fraudulent charges put on his American Express card. American Express refused to reverse the charges and sent him to collections. All his cards were cancelled. The only thing that saved him was that the signatures on the slips obviously didn't match. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJcOZp7H_7E

I've always wanted Chip+PIN. I even write my banks periodically letting them know that it's a major PITA to use their cards in other countries, which makes me more likely to use something other than their card. I never understood the "confuse consumers" or "more difficult for consumers" argument -- anyone who has used a debit card in the USA has had to use a PIN and I don't see consumers protesting that. The whole Chip+Signature thing seemed so half-assed to me. Why go to a system that no one else uses when there's already a perfectly good system out there, with cheap equipment to boot. The Signature part of credit cards always seemed strange to me. I could understand it back in the 1960s when you got your slips or copies of your slips sent back to you, but that's 50+ years ago. I know of several merchants where cashiers immediately toss signed slips into the wastebasket.

@Jim - Consumers may not be liable for fraudulent transactions but they pay for it. You don't think banks don't pass the costs on in their interest or fees? The requirement for signatures vanished in the UK when Chip and Pin came in in 2005. @AussieBen - In the UK we've had Faster Payments (pretty much instantaneous bank transfers) for the last decade. Cheques are moving to imaging and by the summer of 2018 all cheques will clear by 2359 on the day after they're paid in.

@Peter, Canada is a rip off country. Canadians say it more than Americans. Canadians know that milk is about double the US price. Gas is more expensive. Buy anything from Amazon and you'll see the difference. See all the Canadians in Bellingham, WA or Buffalo, NY buy things but Americans do not go to Surrey, BC or Hamilton, ON to buy groceries, hardware, or clothes. Canadian credit cards almost always charge a foreign transaction fee but American cards do not more often than they do. Airfare is generally cheaper in the US so Canadians fly from border airports, but not vice versa. Rip off country is correct.

@Jim. If you’re in need of a credit card that has a pin, patelco offers a mastercard world (2% cash back too) that has a pin on the card. Every time I use it here I’m required to enter my pin. It would be great for those types of purchases you mentioned. The drawback is, they charge a 1% foreign transaction fee, which isn’t too bad. There are also more MasterCard credit cards that require pins for purchases (Target being a big one and Walmart’s MC also shifting to a pin) https://www.patelco.org/Loans-And-Credit/Credit-Cards/MasterCard/PointsRewardsWorld/#Details