Incidentally, I don't feel like going back through the entire thread to see if this point has been made but......when I travel to the UK, the clerk makes a big production of checking the signature on my card (but my cards get run through these terminals so often and there's one that insists he has to put the card into the chip & pin slot even though he can see it's not chip & pin that the signature panel begins to quickly wear through and you can see the word void under it. I have to replace the card every couple of months.

However in the USA, they almost NEVER but I mean NEVER check signatures; as a matter of fact, you swipe your card in most places now and the card never leaves your hand. And in many many cases, they don't ask for signatures below a certain amount. My grocery now never asks me to sign the signature pad if the charge is less than $50...gasoline insert in terminal and fill up...fast food places swipe the card usually no signature.

So I think they have found the signature checks adds nothing to security.

Signatures were never intended to "add to security" -- they are only a mechanism by which you can help support repudiation. It's important to keep separate the process of authorization and the goal of shutting down a card if it has been compromised. Since much of the latter is done using real-time networks, the need to do the former -- by anything other than asking the network -- has become less important. The signatures were originally there for the same reason you have to sign checks: if the check is repudiated after presentation, a signature can help establish that the check was unauthorized.

Individual merchants are free to attempt to thwart unauthorized charges by, for instance, asking for photo ID and comparing the name to the name on the card and the photo to the person presenting it, but the real question is: will the network authorize the charge?

Actual repudiation is rare these days; most card issuers will accept an affidavit from the cardholder ("I did not authorize this charge") in lieu of worrying about finding paper signatures.

I beg to differ. From what I've read, both mc and visa prohibit merchants from asking for any other form of id before allowing a credit card transaction. No, I should re-phrase that. They don't prohibit merchants from asking for additional ID but they prohibit merdchants from refusing the transactin if the purchasee does not furnish any other form of id as long as the signature matches.

As a matter of routine, I refuse to show any other form of ID when making a cc purchase and have had several discussions with merchants regarding this and carry in my wallet a copy of the applicable visa regulation. But it's for your protection I am told repeatedly. Wrong.

Look credit card fraud happens and it's happened to me two or three times when my number has been compromised. No big deal, really. A couple of phone calls and a written statement usually take care of it. The biggest problem is notifying all the merchants who automatically debit my card to pay bills of the new number but then again I have to do that every time they change the expiration date. Again, annoying but no big deal.

Identity theft, well that's another thing. If these vermin can get more info from you, say a driver's license number or phone number or address, you are much more liable to identity theft. Therefore I will not allow any clerk or mercdhant to see any of this information. Period. I kinow there are some people who write in the signature panels things like ask for id. Of course, that invalidates the card but folks, you should never, I mean never, give any other form of identifrication when using a credit card While I agree it doesn't happen often, it does happen. And I'm not going to open anything up to additional identify theft possiblities.

I might add that I think the only place my cc can be compromised these days is in restaurants...for the most part the card is either swiped by me into terminals or is swiped by the cashier in department stores right in front of me. However, sometiomes in restaurants the waiter takes my card into some back room where it can be compromised. I'm willing to bet the last time this happened to me it was at some restaurant.

I am very impressed that with the chip and pin cards come the portable terminals they bring to your table when charging things say in a London restaurant. The card once again never leaves my sight thus minimizing the opportunities to compromise the number on the card. This is also a direction the US banks should move and require these portable terminals in restaurants which will have to happen if and when they go to chip and pin.

And you're aware that the merchant can refuse to do business with you for any reason whatsoever, right? Technically you're correct: they can't not take your card. But: they can outright refuse your business.

I agree that this is a benefit to C&P for consumers, but I don't think the evidence shows that C&P entails less fraud overall than non-C&P. You said you weren't interested in reading the archives, but this is a long thread and there's plenty of information about that issue here.

Anyway, we're drifting here ...

Well...they are in violation of their mc/visa agreement and I will report them to mc/visa if they pull this garbage and I tell them that and losing your right to take mc/visa might not be a good thing for most merchants.

My protection from identity theft is of the upmost importance to me and to me when you sign an agreement, you have to abide by it.

If you present a card, and they ask for ID, and you refuse, they can simply kick you out of your store and refuse to do business with you and Visa/MC aren't involved. You might have a case if they said "cash only" after you refused ID, but I don't think I'd want your money in that case.

Good luck with that :cool: Let us know how it goes ...

Hasn't happened yet....

Not really. If it's like a multi-billion dollar "merchant" like say, Carrefour of France or say Harrod's of the UK, MC and VISA are not gonna pull their rights; they are a money maker for MC/VISA :D

True but it's rarely the multi million dollar corporations that pull this garbage.

You are welcome to get your credit card products from UNFCU. If UNFCU demonstrates there's a real market (as opposed to a survey of interest), other issuers will jump on board.

Not really....http://www.unfcu.org/content.aspx?id=415

I beg to differ, multi million dollar corporations are usually the one that uses their powers of economy to pull off this same kind of garbage. :D

Like Walmart. I don't shop there, but the few times I have recently they have pulled the ID garbage...specifying drivers license, not just id. So I guess if I have a credit card I must also be a driver and if I can't afford a car I probably use cash :rolleyes:

Do as I did with my local wal-mart. Just say no and demand to see a supervisor. I showed the supervisor the regs from master card and he told the cashier to take the credit card and just check the signture.

Next time I shopped at that Wal-mart, they no longer asked for ID. I don't think it's a Wal-mart policy; I think it's a local policy and it most assuredly is a violation of the merchant agreement. You usign an agreement, you live by it.

Except now you also have to deal with annoyed customers behind you grumbling "make yourself easier and just show your ID buddy." What you're doing is right and in principle I agree 100% with you, but at the same time you're also looked upon as an a--hole by everyone else behind you. You know, you've faced it yourself when grandma starts going through her purse trying to find her checkbook and start writing out a checkbook for payment at the cashier, you start mumbling or thinking "get your damn checkbook ready before you reach the cashier" or "who the heck writes checks at the supermarket these days!?" :D

The same thing with credit card usage abroad. Whip out a non-chipped card for payment at a mass retailer/merchant everywhere else in the world (except US, parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, Mongolia, and Iran), you end up hogging all the line as the cashiers and supervisors at those multi-million dollar retailers and merchants flip through their procedural manual how to process a magnetic stripe which they don't know how to do anymore. And its not like the workers there have been long enough to remember how to do mag-stripe payments, turnover rate is huge and you don't make a career being a mass-retailer cashier, just like you don't make a career out of being a cashier at BestBuy/Target/McDonalds/Wal-Mart/etc over here stateside.