Credit Card Companies Dropping Signature Requirement

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Businesses are always looking for ways to make checkout faster. With advancing technologies and a need for faster credit card processing, many credit card companies have decided to drop the need for signatures on payment slips and checkout terminals. This makes your payment processing options even faster.

Dropping Signature Requirements

Mastercard, Discover, American Express, and Visa have all dropped the signature requirement as of April 2018. Technology and anti-fraud capabilities have advanced far enough that signatures are no longer necessary to fight fraud. This is because they’re no longer among the most effective pieces of evidence considered in anti-fraud work.

This isn’t a radical or sudden idea. It’s long been considered and weighed as an option. If anything, credit card companies have waited longer than they have to before doing away with the need for signatures.

What about Chargebacks?

The ACH payment system has no real use for signatures either. Regardless of ACH and the decisions companies are making about credit card processing, some businesses are still taking things step by step. This is especially true for high risk merchants, since signatures are still used as evidence when considering chargebacks.

There will likely be a period of time until the approach to chargebacks catches up with the dropped signature requirements. Many businesses have reported this, and so are still requiring customer signatures.

Chip cards help eliminate the risk of this, but not everyone uses them, and there’s still a need for some departments to get on the same page. When weighing whether to request customer signatures or not, try to balance your risk of chargebacks against your need for speed in your payment processing options.

Balance Your Needs

If you need to accelerate customers through credit card processing, dropping signatures achieves this. If your business risks a higher rate of chargebacks, you may wish to keep requiring signatures for the time being. Credit card companies should catch up on this sooner rather than later.

Contact Y2Payments today at 888-693-1850 for a free no risk statement review & audit!