Business | Credit where credit isn’t due

Americans will no longer have to sign for credit-card purchases

But the move will do nothing to help security

By A.W. | WASHINGTON, DC

AMERICANS, and people who travel to America, have good reason to celebrate this month. By the end of April, the four major credit-card networks in the country will all stop requiring retailers to collect signatures from customers when completing transactions. Visa, the world’s biggest credit-card issuer, announced in January that signatures would no longer be required from this month for retailers in North America with chip-card readers. For Mastercard, the second-largest, the same change became effective on April 13th, covering purchases in the United States and Canada. American Express, in third place, is dropping the signature requirement this month for retailers around the world. Discover, the fourth, is doing so in the United States, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean.

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