American Express finally ditches the need for signatures with its credit card
Like MasterCard and Discover before it, American Express is eliminating signatures for all credit card purchases.
The company announced Monday that merchants won't need customers to sign for anything starting in April 2018. This affects all shoppers everywhere around the world where American Express is accepted.
The payment process has outgrown signatures as a security measure -- American Express credited contactless pay options, chip technology, and way more online shopping as big reasons to ditch the signatures. Plus, American Express and other card companies have many other methods to detect fraud.
The American Express signature policy change will be for all payment amounts. Already anything under $50 in the U.S. already doesn't need a signature. And when was the last time anyone really looked at what you scrawled on the paper anyway?
Visa is still a hold-out on completely eliminating signatures for its card purchases, but by April 2018 it looks like it'll need to join the party or risk looking really out of date.
Topics Cybersecurity
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
