Discover and American Express (NYSE: AXP) are the latest credit card companies to remove signatures at checkout for credit and debit transactions.
Discover and American Express get rid of signatures
Discover's new policy will take effect on the Discover Global Network in the United States, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean from April 2018. American Express has announced that it will give up the mandatory signature for all traders in the same amount of time.
Just last month, MasterCard also announced that it was deleting the signatures at the checkouts. For small businesses with a large number of credit card sales throughout the day, it means greater efficiency and more time to improve other aspects of the business.
"The payments landscape has evolved to the point where we can now eliminate this painful point for our traders," said Jaromir Divilek, executive vice president of Global Network Business for American Express in the statement.
What does this mean for your small business? The answer is less paperwork and a faster and more secure cashier system.
Although signing a credit card receipt is fairly simple, it requires the business owner to keep track of receipts and ensure that they are correctly stored. That's because customers can dispute charges on a credit card bill for up to 18 months. If you have not received the receipt, your company may be required to return the money for purchase to the customer's credit card company.
The new feature is made possible by innovations in digital technology and the high penetration rate of smartphones. Jasma Ghai, vice president of Global Products Innovation at Discover, said in a statement: "With the increase of new payment security capabilities, such as chip technology and tokenization, it is time to remove this step . "
Discover the system in place
With the implementation of digital authentication technologies, including multifactor authentication, biometrics and tokenization, Discover has already put in place a system to eliminate signatures.
If you want to start using this particular feature in Discover Global Network, you may need to update your point-of-sale (POS) system. If you have the right point of sale system, you can start enjoying this feature.
Discover also addresses the issue of security for its customers with some additional security features. This includes chip technology to avoid cloning, payment management information on mobile and digital devices with Digital Exchange, monitoring risky websites, freezing credit cards with its Freeze It service and more.
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