Originally Posted by
AllieKat
Chip and signature is mostly a non-issue for acceptance. I know of two places with issues in London:
B&Q - NO ACCEPTANCE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES
Japan Centre - signs up that say only with UK-issued driving licence or passport. Staff say sign is wrong and they'll allow foreign passports. Unknown what reality is.
Both places happily accept contactless.
For the most part chip and sign is totally fine.
Contactless and ODA, however, break TfL, vending machines, self checkout, etc (self checkout needs PIN OR contactless).
Adding contactless with ODA would give near perfect UK acceptance even without PIN. Your preferred country may vary.
Here's what I don't get. A merchant cannot tell whether a card with an emv chip is pin preferred or signature preferred when it is presented. The only time the merchant finds out is when the message signature required appears on the terminal. At that point, the sale has already been confirmed and authorized. At that point, the merchant has to go through a whole process of voiding the sale. Why would any merchant want to do that? It makes no sense to me.
As far as self service in the UK; chip and signature cards do work but what happens is a message flashes seek assistance and you then have to wait for some clerk to get off his or her rear end, walk over, enter his or her code, generate a signature slip to be signed and put it in the till. They have become much more lax in actually checking signatures although some go through the motions. It's a waste of time for everybody of course. I just don't get why the UK and other countries do not simply do what we do here i.e. no cvm for purchases under say $50 or the equivalent in local currency. Much more efficient for the merchant and for the customer unless one actually believes, and I surely don't, that checking signatures introduces any degree of additional security.
But then again, I guess I just don't get it.