News

AmEx scraps signatures, leaves Visa as sole holdout

December 14, 2017

American Express has said that starting in April it will no longer require a cardholder signature for transactions at the point of sale anywhere in the world. This announcement follows similar statements by MasterCard and Discover, though AmEx will be first to make the change globally, according to a company news release.

The move leaves Visa as the only major card network still clinging to the practice of collecting signatures from cardholders, a safeguard of questionable value in the eyes of merchants, consumers and, now, most major card networks.

"The payments landscape has evolved to the point where we can now eliminate this pain point for our merchants," said Jaromir Divilek, executive vice president of global network business at American Express. "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."

The need for signatures has declined due to advancements that include contactless payments, global adoption of EMV chip technology and the expansion of online commerce, according to the release. American Express said it has also deployed advanced machine learning algorithms that allow for more precise detection of fraud.