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Comment by stevep98 | Hacker News Reader

There’s something missing from this article.

When you sign a receipt, you’re not just providing a sample of your signature for comparison against the one on the card. You are signing a document, usually saying that ‘I agree to comply with the terms of the cardholder agreement’

If this is no longer necessary, the card issuers must have determined that they have other legal agreements which cover purchases, and that the signature on each transaction is not necessary.

Also missing is a discussion of why PINs are not seen by the banks as an obvious next step.

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Where does it say on the receipt that I am agreeing to the cardholder agreement?

This sounds like the old myth that "if you don't sign the back of your card, you can't be held liable for the debts you incur if you contest it later."

This is of course not true.

>Where does it say on the receipt that I am agreeing to the cardholder agreement?

It used to be standard ~15-20 years ago. I don't see that verbiage any more.

Fun fact, when I worked in retail in the late 90s, the full card number was not really treated as a secret that needed to be protected - the registers we had had a full audit trail printed on a receipt roll inside the register, every time any transaction was inputted the receipt roll would print the details of the transaction. The full card number was first printed on that. Then it was printed on the signature paper. The receipt itself had the last 4 only.

> Where does it say on the receipt

Obviously on the front with all the other printed text.

If your question is whether it actually does say it, I just pulled the most recent receipt out of my wallet, and this is what is printed right above the blank for my signature: "I agree to pay the above total amount according to the card issuer agreement."

I checked two other receipts from different businesses and they say the same thing.

It might or might not be legally binding or necessary, whether it's there is pretty clear. It is. At least where I live (US), it is.

It depends on the receipt, but many receipts do say that you agree to pay for the purchase in accordance with the cardholder agreement, or some such wording. This has been decreasingly common in recent years, and I don't know the requirements, but it's not gone.

You're right about the old myth you cite. The cardholder agreements are usually accepted either by signing the card or by using it.

The wording is highly dependent on the country. I don't think I've seen that in Australia in a long long time, on the rare occasion that I've had to sign rather than use PIN or contactless, but I've been in Asia for the past three weeks and did a lot of signing for my card with wording that sounds like that.

Most of my experience with this is in the US.

> You are signing a document

This is in fact the only reason for a signature, it does fuck all to identify somebody, even if merchants were to check it, which they never do.

But with the amount of CCTV nowadays, that's probably more reliable than a signature.

Also ironic that anybody would describe PINs as the next step, I can't remember a time before PINs were used. Even EMV contactless payments are pretty common now, and provide benefits to the banks (liability shift/less chance of PIN compromise) and customers (quicker).

It's not a tech problem, it's a cultural one. You don't realise how much less friction, less hassle it can be until you've lived it. From my time in the US, it seems like it isn't exposed to outside ideas that much, maybe due to it's size.

I wouldn’t call it a cultural problem: there are many people in the US who really want contactless payments, and there is no group of voters or consumers campaigning against them for “tradition’s sake” (or any reason).

It seems like a legacy tech problem, held up by the same institutional forces that keep large financial systems in COBOL or FORTRAN.

The incentive for the merchant to collect signatures is fighting chargebacks. If there is a disputed transaction and the merchant cannot retrieve a receipt the customer automatically wins regardless of almost any other fact(s). But on purchases of less than $50 it was decided by the market that skipping the signature saved more money in faster checkouts than it saved in dispute resolution.

The EMV standard includes a purchase total verification step where the customer is shown the number and must press OK to confirm. But again speed has been considered more important. That OK? prompt is going away and Quick Chip will first authorize a dummy amount and send the real amount after the transaction is totaled up. It's not like USA market was using PINs for two factor authentication anyway. Restaurants are allowed to adjust purchase totals for tips and closing out tabs.

You already made that agreement when you signed up for the credit card. You havn't needed a signature for _every_ purchase in a long long time. This is just getting rid of them all together.

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