MasterCard customers won’t have to sign receipts
Creditcard giant says it uses newer, more secure methods to prove identity
MasterCard customers won’t need to search for a pen anymore when they make purchases with the credit card.
The credit-card giant is making it official, eliminating the need to sign for purchases made on the card at retail, as of April. Whether to sign or not will now be an optional decision for merchants in the U.S. and Canada. Already, many merchants don’t currently require signatures for purchases.
“Eliminating the need for signature is another step in the digital evolution of payments and payment security,” says Linda Kirkpatrick, executive vice president of MasterCard’s U.S. market development division.
In a blog post, she says research showed the company that most folks believed it would be easier to pay, and that checkout lines would move faster, without signatures slowing them down.
“This important step will improve the customer experience and eliminate inefficient, ineffective and costly processes for the retail merchant community and their customers,” said Laura Townsend, senior vice president of operations for the Merchant Advisory Group, a consortium of retailers interested in new ways to make payments. “New and improved digital authentication methods are emerging, which bring better security to the payments ecosystem. Elimination of signature will help pave the way for adoption of these methods.”
MasterCard says some 80% of retail transactions made through the card don’t require signatures. The signature originally was designed as a security precaution, to prove that you indeed made the purchase. But MasterCard notes that chips, biometrics and tokens use newer and more secure methods to prove identity.
“This important step will improve the customer experience and eliminate inefficient, ineffective and costly processes for the retail merchant community and their customers.”
Laura Townsend, senior vice president of operations for the Merchant Advisory Group