American Express scraps signature requirement for purchases paid with its card

American Express yesterday announced that it will no longer have a signature requirement for purchases made with its card starting April 2018.

According to the credit card company, signatures are no longer required thanks to new technologies such as EMV chips and mobile tap. Also, the move would speed up the process of point-of-sale transactions and cut operating expenses for merchants who need to retain signatures.

"The payments landscape has evolved to the point where we can now eliminate this pain point for our merchants," Jaromir Divilek, executive vice president of Global Network Business at American Express, said in a press release.

"Our fraud capabilities have advanced so that signatures are no longer necessary to fight fraud. In addition, the majority of American Express transactions today already do not require a signature at the point of sale as a result of previous policy changes we made to help our merchants."

American Express now becomes the third major credit card company to announce that a signature would not be required. Discover announced its plans to do so last week while Mastercard adopted the policy in October, according to CBS News.

American Express had earlier cancelled the signature requirement for purchases of less than $50 made in the US.

The change, announced yesterday, is intended to streamline the checkout process. Signing a receipt was intended as an anti-fraud measure, however, its  effectiveness has been a subject of debate.

''Signatures pose obvious problems: People often pay little attention when scrawling them, and they can be forged,'' MarketWatch reported. ''And they're not even used to prove the person presenting a card is actually the one whose name appears on the plastic.''

However, they are useful when a customer is contesting a purchase, as banks and merchants can refer to the signature if required.