In a piece entitled The PIN is mightier than the Pen, TVNZ reports on the recent announcement that Australia will eliminate signatures completely by 2013. Wonder when they'll rid the world wide web of hackers' all-time favorite product, "signature debit."
Here's an excerpt:
Your PIN, not your pen, will become the form of confirmation for card payments as signatures start to be phased out from next year, a leading card issuer says.
Visa general manager for Australia and New Zealand Chris Clark said the use of signatures to approve payments was being slowly eliminated to lessen card fraud and would completely replace personal identification numbers (PIN).
"We want to minimize any opportunity for card fraud at point of sale," Clark said. "We are moving to that point by 2013 and it will be PIN and card chipping.
All new Visa credit cards issued from January 2010 will have embedded smart chips to increase security in consumer transactions, with debit cards and reloadable prepaid cards being upgraded from a year later, Clark said. "The migration from signature to PIN will allow us to take full advantage of the protection provided by chip card technology," he said.
