In the US, the Fair Credit Billing Act limits consumer liability to $50 per lost or stolen credit card:
http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles...nd-debit-cards
Note that the only requirement is that you sign an affidavit stating the charges were unauthorized. This is independent from any 'zero liability' policy, but helps explain why they are so common in the US. As $50 is the most that could be recovered, it isn't worth the effort.
Also, note that debit cards are covered by a different law that provides much weaker protection against fraud.
The same protection applies in other countries - in the UK the limit is £50 (which you could argue is *more* than $50, but the psychological effect is the same), yet Visa and MasterCard don't offer "Zero liability" here.
There is no distinction between Credit and Debit cards under UK law.
Originally Posted by
JEFFJAGUAR
I am sure the same studies have been done in the UK regarding just how much fraud with small purchases is prevented by signature checking and the generation of paper receipts (do I hear green here) and there is absolutely no reason to believe the situation in the UK is all that different than in the USA.
As I've said before, once credit card fraud rose massively in the early 2000s, merchants, card issuers and cardholders all pushed for more rigorous security measures in the UK.
-Signatures were checked more vigorously
-Holograms and other card features were checked properly
-People stopped letting the waiter take their card to a till at the back of the restaurant - taking it up to the till themselves
-One town in the UK even experimented with taking a fingerprint from the cardholder!
With "Chip and PIN", these measures have gone away - and we've had it for over 10 years now.
As for paper receipts, they are still used extensively. People generally expect to get a receipt when they buy something - no matter how you pay. Some merchants don't give receipts for contactless transactions, but other than that, not much has changed since the move to EMV.
The major difference between the US and the UK is of course that we have EMV with PIN, so we don't need those security measures anymore.