Credit Card Signatures Are About to Become Extinct

Adult Signature Not Required…

The New York Times writes:

Credit card networks are finally ready to concede what has been obvious to shoppers and merchants for years: Signatures are not a useful way to prove someone’s identity. Later this month, four of the largest networks — American Express, Discover, Mastercard and Visa — will stop requiring them to complete card transactions.

The signature, a centuries-old way of verifying identity, is rapidly going extinct. Personal checks are anachronisms. Pen-and-ink letters are scarce. When credit card signatures disappear, handwritten authentications will be relegated to a few special circumstances: sealing a giant transaction like a house purchase, or getting a celebrity to autograph a piece of memorabilia — and even that is being supplanted by the cellphone selfie.

Card signatures won’t vanish overnight. The change is optional, leaving retailers to decide whether they want to stop collecting signatures.

(click here to continue reading Credit Card Signatures Are About to Become Extinct – The New York Times.)

finally!

Speaking for myself, I’ve been using doodles or wavy lines for years and the only time I’ve ever been questioned was once, when voting.¹ 

Nobody ever even seems to notice or care my signature looks like a sine wave.

One Is The Loneliest Number

Footnotes:

1. I had to produce my driver license to receive my ballot [↩]