2013-12-13 Like a school trip

[Hurbster]

Oh yeah; PINs have effectively replaced signatures for credit card transactions in the UK. Virtually any retail place that takes credit cards has a wireless keypad or two. The banks reckon it's more secure (I guess that any idiot can forge most people's scrawled signatures these days), although some people get twitchy about the electronic security of the system. I think it's still possible to use a signature instead, with a bit of messing about; that Malaysian visitor to the UK would probably get a funny look before the shop worked out how to handle the problem. But it would make them a weird out-of-date foreigner.

From what I've seen, France and Spain are much the same. The only time I usually get to sign a credit card slip nowadays is on trips to Germany.

The UK is also pretty much into contactless payment as well.

[Spidrift]

That's clearly supposed to be the next big thing. I haven't got around to using it yet.

We won't talk about how far it's supposedly possible to read those cards from, given the right equipment.

[Velf]

Oh yeah; PINs have effectively replaced signatures for credit card transactions in the UK.

Same stuff in Russia, and chip cards (debit and credit ones) are widely issued by the banks, however you still have to sign receipts in some places where they have an older terminal for just a magnetic tape. And BTW, you can pay with a card in some taxi companies in Russia (the fancy ones)