<story><title>MasterCard Ending Signature Requirements</title><url>https://consumerist.com/2017/10/19/mastercard-ending-signature-requirements/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pmoriarty</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;Personally, I have been known to sign on the dotted line with a doodle of a piece of tofu and no one has ever stopped me, because signatures mean very little in this digital age.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This has absolutely nothing to do with us being in a so-called &amp;quot;digital age&amp;quot;.  Signatures have been completely ignored by virtually everyone except autograph hunters since basically forever.&lt;p&gt;The problem is that the person receiving your signature usually has no way to verify that the signature belongs to the person authorized to whatever it is you signed for.  In the case of credit card signatures, the best they can do is try to match your signature to the one on the back of the card.  I think I&amp;#x27;ve had that happen exactly once in my life.&lt;p&gt;Even there, the possessor of the card can easily replace the signature on the back with another one with minimal forgery skills, or even scrawl something vaguely resembling the signature on the back of the card and get away with it.  Nothing &amp;quot;digital&amp;quot; about this forgery or the lack of attention or care from the people receiving it.&lt;p&gt;Banks are really in the best position to verify signatures on checks that they get.  They could potentially access a huge database of authentic signatures from previously cashed checks and do some sort of AI pattern-matching against the signatures they get before cashing them.  But do they?  I don&amp;#x27;t know.  But I very much doubt it.&lt;p&gt;Besides, at least in my case, my own signatures vary pretty widely from other ones I&amp;#x27;ve signed in the past.  Sure, there&amp;#x27;s some resemblance, but they&amp;#x27;re far from exact copies of each other, and a forger wouldn&amp;#x27;t have to try very hard to sign a similar one after glancing at a sample.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>joecot</author><text>Your bank is the only one who would be verifying your signature.&lt;p&gt;When you call to dispute a charge, your credit card company contacts the original merchant. They can either request information from them about the purchase, or just immediately side with you (a chargeback). If they perform a chargeback, the money gets removed from their merchant account and deducted from your bill, and they get hit with a chargeback fee.&lt;p&gt;One of the reasons merchants collect the signature is to have more data to give to the credit card company during an inquiry, or so they can try to dispute the chargeback. If you claim you never made the purchase, having your signature on a slip helps the merchant with the dispute, as would having you on video signing for it. Credit card companies side with the customer a vast majority of the time, but if the merchant has reasonable proof that you knowingly made the charge (which might include that signed slip), the merchant can win those disputes.&lt;p&gt;Previously not having a signed credit card slip usually meant the credit card company automatically sided with the customer over the merchant. I doubt dropping this requirement will make it easier for merchants to win chargeback disputes, though.</text></comment>
<story><title>MasterCard Ending Signature Requirements</title><url>https://consumerist.com/2017/10/19/mastercard-ending-signature-requirements/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pmoriarty</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;Personally, I have been known to sign on the dotted line with a doodle of a piece of tofu and no one has ever stopped me, because signatures mean very little in this digital age.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This has absolutely nothing to do with us being in a so-called &amp;quot;digital age&amp;quot;.  Signatures have been completely ignored by virtually everyone except autograph hunters since basically forever.&lt;p&gt;The problem is that the person receiving your signature usually has no way to verify that the signature belongs to the person authorized to whatever it is you signed for.  In the case of credit card signatures, the best they can do is try to match your signature to the one on the back of the card.  I think I&amp;#x27;ve had that happen exactly once in my life.&lt;p&gt;Even there, the possessor of the card can easily replace the signature on the back with another one with minimal forgery skills, or even scrawl something vaguely resembling the signature on the back of the card and get away with it.  Nothing &amp;quot;digital&amp;quot; about this forgery or the lack of attention or care from the people receiving it.&lt;p&gt;Banks are really in the best position to verify signatures on checks that they get.  They could potentially access a huge database of authentic signatures from previously cashed checks and do some sort of AI pattern-matching against the signatures they get before cashing them.  But do they?  I don&amp;#x27;t know.  But I very much doubt it.&lt;p&gt;Besides, at least in my case, my own signatures vary pretty widely from other ones I&amp;#x27;ve signed in the past.  Sure, there&amp;#x27;s some resemblance, but they&amp;#x27;re far from exact copies of each other, and a forger wouldn&amp;#x27;t have to try very hard to sign a similar one after glancing at a sample.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mikestew</author><text>&lt;i&gt;In the case of credit card signatures, the best they can do is try to match your signature to the one on the back of the card.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;And even that &amp;quot;best&amp;quot; attempt is pathetic on the face of it. What, the person behind the counter at 7-11 is now supposed to be an expert in graphoanalysis? &amp;quot;In between cleaning the bathrooms and stocking Coke, you have to verify the authenticity of the signatures on these contracts.&amp;quot;</text></comment>