Mastercard Will No Longer Require Customer Signatures on In-Person Purchases
"Sign on the dotted line, please." It's a phrase likely every credit card holder in the US has heard at some point after making a purchase. But it won't be around for much longer if you use a Mastercard-branded card for your purchase. As of April 2018, Mastercard will no longer require signatures from debit or credit card holders on in-person purchases in the US and Canada.
"Eliminating the need for signature is another step in the digital evolution of payments and payment security," Mastercard said. "Our consumer research found that a majority of people believe it would be easier to pay and that checkout lines would move faster if they didn't need to sign when making a purchase."
While this may seem like a huge step to take for a major company, it's not that far off. Currently, more than 80% of Mastercard store transactions in North America don't require a cardholder signature at checkout. The small change could drastically improve the cardholder experience for in-person purchases.
Mastercard is assuring cardholders that its levels of security will not be compromised with the switch to a signature-free transaction. The company said that its secure systems, along with digital payment methods such as card chips, tokenization, biometrics and digital platforms help provide new and more secure methods to prove a person's identity.
Overall, this is a positive move from Mastercard, which may speed up the process for cardholders at checkout. This isn't the first step Mastercard has taken to update its products. In April, the company announced that it could add fingerprint readers to credit cards in order to prove someone's identity.
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