Random Thoughts

[Max Rockatansky]

The bigger shock to me was the absence of any place to put my signature on the new card.

That would have been fun at the casino I worked at last—official policy there was I could get written up for accepting a card with no signature on it.

Maybe I'm just young, but the importance of signing credit and/or debit cards has always confused me. I assume the idea is that your signature is unique to you and should match your signature on the receipt, but my signature is the only thing I've written in cursive in years and it's not especially consistent as a result. If anyone was actually using that to validate my identity, I probably would have gotten called on it many times over by now, and the fact that I haven't been makes me think anyone could fake my signature and nobody would notice.

Checking the signature used to be required of merchants by credit card companies.  Back in the day a significant part of my early LP days were spent watching video to see if the cashiers were checking.  Usually I would get to asked to review video if a credit card company was filing a chargeback claim against the store.  Most of the time the cashiers weren't checking.

[Rothman]

The bigger shock to me was the absence of any place to put my signature on the new card.

That would have been fun at the casino I worked at last—official policy there was I could get written up for accepting a card with no signature on it.

Maybe I'm just young, but the importance of signing credit and/or debit cards has always confused me. I assume the idea is that your signature is unique to you and should match your signature on the receipt, but my signature is the only thing I've written in cursive in years and it's not especially consistent as a result. If anyone was actually using that to validate my identity, I probably would have gotten called on it many times over by now, and the fact that I haven't been makes me think anyone could fake my signature and nobody would notice.

But why wouldn't you sign the card like you do receipts?

[TheCatalyst31]

The bigger shock to me was the absence of any place to put my signature on the new card.

That would have been fun at the casino I worked at last—official policy there was I could get written up for accepting a card with no signature on it.

Maybe I'm just young, but the importance of signing credit and/or debit cards has always confused me. I assume the idea is that your signature is unique to you and should match your signature on the receipt, but my signature is the only thing I've written in cursive in years and it's not especially consistent as a result. If anyone was actually using that to validate my identity, I probably would have gotten called on it many times over by now, and the fact that I haven't been makes me think anyone could fake my signature and nobody would notice.

But why wouldn't you sign the card like you do receipts?

If I'm signing something important, like the card itself, I'll take the time to do the nicer version of my signature. If I'm signing a receipt, the odds are I'm half-assing it and putting my initials followed by squiggles. (And if it's one of those tablets you have to sign with your finger, it might look like one giant squiggle.)

[Scott5114]

The bigger shock to me was the absence of any place to put my signature on the new card.

That would have been fun at the casino I worked at last—official policy there was I could get written up for accepting a card with no signature on it.

Maybe I'm just young, but the importance of signing credit and/or debit cards has always confused me. I assume the idea is that your signature is unique to you and should match your signature on the receipt, but my signature is the only thing I've written in cursive in years and it's not especially consistent as a result. If anyone was actually using that to validate my identity, I probably would have gotten called on it many times over by now, and the fact that I haven't been makes me think anyone could fake my signature and nobody would notice.

Signing the back of the card signifies that you agree to comply with the terms and conditions of the card issuer. (That's why historically the signature panel had "NOT VALID UNLESS SIGNED" next to it.) It has nothing to do with identity verification.

[kphoger]

Years ago, I change the way I sign my name.  That actually turned out to be problematic every so often.  Notably, there was a number of years in which my passport still had my old signature in it, and trips to Mexico required me to sign my name on the immigration documents exactly as it appeared in my passport—except that I eventually lost the muscle memory to know how to do that.  There was also the matter of renewing IDs while using one with a different signature as supporting documentation.  Ugh.  I'm glad they all match now.

Anyway, my current debit card literally doesn't have anywhere to sign.  That's what took me aback when I first got it.

[Rothman]

The bigger shock to me was the absence of any place to put my signature on the new card.

That would have been fun at the casino I worked at last—official policy there was I could get written up for accepting a card with no signature on it.

Maybe I'm just young, but the importance of signing credit and/or debit cards has always confused me. I assume the idea is that your signature is unique to you and should match your signature on the receipt, but my signature is the only thing I've written in cursive in years and it's not especially consistent as a result. If anyone was actually using that to validate my identity, I probably would have gotten called on it many times over by now, and the fact that I haven't been makes me think anyone could fake my signature and nobody would notice.

Signing the back of the card signifies that you agree to comply with the terms and conditions of the card issuer. (That's why historically the signature panel had "NOT VALID UNLESS SIGNED" next to it.) It has nothing to do with identity verification.

Google AI gives that answer, but...(?)

https://www.bankrate.com/credit-cards/business/required-signature-credit-card-purchases/

[hotdogPi]

I had no idea I was even supposed to sign my debit card.

[Scott5114]

Google AI gives that answer, but...

So did our credit card processor at the casino in Oklahoma. It's possible that's their company policy and not Visa/MC/Discover/Amex's, but those were the rules we were to follow. I didn't want the casino to get charged back on a $1000 credit card transaction and then have to deal with them trying to come after me for the money because I didn't follow procedure.

[JayhawkCO]

Dromedaries have one hump, Bactrians have two humps, Camelbacks have five slopes on the polygonal upper chord...

And my Camelback, at least, has 2.5 L of water too.

[TheCatalyst31]

The bigger shock to me was the absence of any place to put my signature on the new card.

That would have been fun at the casino I worked at last—official policy there was I could get written up for accepting a card with no signature on it.

Maybe I'm just young, but the importance of signing credit and/or debit cards has always confused me. I assume the idea is that your signature is unique to you and should match your signature on the receipt, but my signature is the only thing I've written in cursive in years and it's not especially consistent as a result. If anyone was actually using that to validate my identity, I probably would have gotten called on it many times over by now, and the fact that I haven't been makes me think anyone could fake my signature and nobody would notice.

Signing the back of the card signifies that you agree to comply with the terms and conditions of the card issuer. (That's why historically the signature panel had "NOT VALID UNLESS SIGNED" next to it.) It has nothing to do with identity verification.

That's something I assumed I did when I signed up for the card in the first place. I don't remember the process super well, but I'm pretty sure paperwork was involved. And given how few places check the signature, I imagine Visa, MasterCard, etc. don't want to deal with the implications of tons of their customers using cards that are invalid on a technicality.

[Scott5114]

That's something I assumed I did when I signed up for the card in the first place.

Yes, but the merchant had no proof of that without your signature on the back of the card. It's not as though most people carry their signed credit card EULA around with them. Nowadays there's a level of trust that someone with a Visa card really did get it from an organization actually affiliated with Visa but there was a time that wasn't necessarily something you took someone's word on.

It's worth noting a lot of this is traditional stuff dating back to the 1980s that didn't get modernized until Visa/MC dragged U.S. merchants kicking and screaming into the 21st century by telling them merchants would be on the hook for fraud claims on non-chip transactions. That only happened in the mid-2010s, recently enough that I was working at the casino when it happened. Europe had been on chip and PIN for a decade or so by that point, and the Europeans are still ahead of us in a few ways (restaurants bringing the card reader to the table, for instance, which is something I've seen a few restaurants in Las Vegas do, but is still in the minority here).

If you really want to see how archaic the banking sector is on the back end, poke around the ACH system sometime. There are some standard practices there that are frankly horrifying.

[kphoger]

So why are signatures on the back of the card no longer a thing?

[Max Rockatansky]

So why are signatures on the back of the card no longer a thing?

The credit car industry changed their procedures after PCI laws changed a decade and a half ago.  I want to say that I was still working at Sears when got a notification that the cashiers could stop checking signatures. 

[Scott5114]

So why are signatures on the back of the card no longer a thing?

I surmise it's partly that nobody really feels the need to care whether someone does or does not honor the Visa Cardholder Agreement (if the processor will pay the business, the card goes through, and if they won't, it doesn't), and since the card issuers have basically said they'll cover fraudulent charges on any chip transaction, nobody needs to sign anything so the secondary function of providing something to check against is also pointless.

[Molandfreak]

The signature always wore off the back of my cards by the time they expired anyway.

[Beltway]

So why are signatures on the back of the card no longer a thing?

How would the merchant verify that it was your signature in the first place?

[kphoger]

How would the merchant verify that it was your signature in the first place?

When I got my first job at Target back in 2000, I was trained to check the signature against the customer's ID.

[Max Rockatansky]

So why are signatures on the back of the card no longer a thing?

How would the merchant verify that it was your signature in the first place?

For a while the card holder's license.  This request in the hands of 18 year old cashiers was fantastic at instigating anger from many customers. 

[Beltway]

So why are signatures on the back of the card no longer a thing?

How would the merchant verify that it was your signature in the first place?

For a while the card holder's license.  This request in the hands of 18 year old cashiers was fantastic at instigating anger from many customers.

When I was in high school and worked at a store, it was 16 and 17 year olds as well.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

I figured the increasing move away from having your card handled by others involved in the transaction makes the need for a signature irrelevant anyway.

[Max Rockatansky]

I drove four cars today between 7:30 AM and 9 AM.

[1995hoo]

Posted on another forum and struck me as appropriate here.

[Max Rockatansky]

My wife surprised me this morning and described the basic story beats of the Odessey.  She apparently read the story in high school and wants to see the Christopher Nolan adaptation. 

[elsmere241]

My wife surprised me this morning and described the basic story beats of the Odessey.  She apparently read the story in high school and wants to see the Christopher Nolan adaptation. 

I read the meat of it in high school, and got the gist of the story.  Then around 2001, The Simpsons had an episode called "Tales from the Public Domain".  The first segment was called "Homer's Odyssey".  It started with Homer as Odysseus offering Flanders the Trojan Horse.  It of course had Marge as Penelope and Bart as Telemachus, with a lot of stock characters as the suitors.  The showstopper for me was Styx playing "Lady" at a concert to a bunch of skeletons in the River Styx.  (What else?)

A few years later, my (relatively new) wife was studying the story for a college course.  And she'd never even heard of it and had a hard time understanding it.  (That was not her only unfamiliarity that I just could not grasp in our first few years together.)

[Max Rockatansky]

My wife surprised me this morning and described the basic story beats of the Odessey.  She apparently read the story in high school and wants to see the Christopher Nolan adaptation. 

I read the meat of it in high school, and got the gist of the story.  Then around 2001, The Simpsons had an episode called "Tales from the Public Domain".  The first segment was called "Homer's Odyssey".  It started with Homer as Odysseus offering Flanders the Trojan Horse.  It of course had Marge as Penelope and Bart as Telemachus, with a lot of stock characters as the suitors.  The showstopper for me was Styx playing "Lady" at a concert to a bunch of skeletons in the River Styx.  (What else?)

A few years later, my (relatively new) wife was studying the story for a college course.  And she'd never even heard of it and had a hard time understanding it.  (That was not her only unfamiliarity that I just could not grasp in our first few years together.)

The instigator for the conversation was me flipping through the channels and passing the movie Troy.  Not exactly high cinema but it got my wife's memory jogging.