Starting in April – No More Need to Sign Your MasterCard Bill

There was a time when any purchase using a credit card required the consumer’s signature on the dotted line. Gradually, as the use and popularity of this piece of plastic increased, rules were relaxed. Currently, a credit card holder is mandated to sign for purchases over a specified amount. But come April 2018, even this requirement will be done away with, at least for MasterCard holders. From this date onwards, the company plans to eliminate signature payments altogether.

The main agenda behind this move is to make shopping experiences faster and more convenient for consumers. Moreover, according to the company, it is the next natural step towards “digital evolution of payments and payment security.”

As per research conducted by MasterCard, most consumers believe that checkout lines would move faster if they weren’t required to sign when swiping their credit cards for a purchase.

The company agrees that removal of signature payments may seem a bit radical to consumers who have been using credit and debit cards for decades; however, as far as security is concerned, there is not much to worry about. Given the evolution of the payment system, only 20% of transactions in North America still require a signature at checkout today. Moreover, most credit card companies already employ other means to validate a consumer’s identity, for example, tokenization, chips or personal identification numbers.

Thus, there is always some technology that works behind the scenes, every second, every day, to protect every single transaction that takes place. In fact, the mandatory signature that’s so reassuring to certain users is often nothing more than a scribble that is rarely verified against anything. According to the company, the reason behind this change is that if every signature authorizing a credit card transaction was properly examined, instances of denied transactions would probably increase.

As far as merchant support is concerned, this move by MasterCard has been welcomed with open arms by the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA), which counts a number of retailers, such as Apple, Best Buy, Gap, Target, and Walmart, among its members.

The change addresses a longstanding grievance of retailers that signature payments are not only costly but also an outdated way to secure transactions. Thus, its removal is likely to help partner merchants speed consumers through checkouts as well as decrease costs associated with storing signatures.

Austen Jenson, President of Government Affairs for RILA, mentioned in a statement that the association supports this policy change and would want other payment networks to follow MasterCard’s lead. According to Jenson, in today’s increasingly digital environment, existing measures are inadequate for protecting consumers and merchants. Hence, the payment industry as a whole should work towards finding better solutions to the growth of fraud in stores, as well as online.

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