Discover is one of the latest major credit card companies to announce that they will no longer require customers to sign their name when checking out, starting April 2018. The company has moved to a better system, and says that the implementation of “digital authentication technologies such as tokenization, multi-factor authentication, and biometrics … are more secure than requiring a signature.”
The company feels that this new system is a much better one for customer protection than just signatures. Discover’s move to do away with signature isn’t all that surprising because signature aren’t very useful, at least not in the US. I can’t even remember the last time I used a signature when checking out. So Discover’s move is definitely a step in the right direction.
Majority of the time, people are buying things online without signatures, so this move shouldn’t really surprise anyone. Discover, however, isn’t the first company to do away with signatures. Mastercard earlier this year announced that they wouldn’t be requiring signatures on purchases with their cards starting April 2018.
With new systems in place where Discover is able to offer better protections for their customers, this move is definitely a good one. Considering that many places are also taking chips, and many cards are now out with chips, they are far more secure than just a signature.
