Its a good thing that the use of signature for electronic transaction is coming to an end, as far as I’m concerned
But advocates for the elderly and disabled still have concerns about the new system.
‘‘The purpose of this is better security but for some people it will have the reverse effect,’’ Council on the Ageing Australia’s chief executive, Ian Yates, said.
The council has had reports of bank staff advising elderly people with memory problems to carry a written record of their PIN.
‘‘I’m sure that’s not the official bank position … but that’s what some people will do,’’ Mr Yates said. ‘‘The security implications are worrying.’’
The president of Blind Citizens Australia, Greg Madson, said many older members had never navigated a terminal keypad. ‘‘We will be advocating for some sort of uniformity across the design of these [terminals] so that people who are vision impaired … [do] not have to struggle around the keyboard,’’ he said.
The executive director of the Australian Retailers Association, Russell Zimmerman, said retailers were prepared for the switch and the majority welcomed it.
‘‘It’s going to be far more secure,’’ said Mr Zimmerman, who knows of one man who regularly signed for credit card purchases as ‘Mickey Mouse’. ‘‘Retailers just do not look at these signatures.’’
I have long thought that it was just too easy to copy a signature on the back of a credit card, so much so that I have long had “Pin only” written on the back of my credit card. To be honest I don’t think that there will be a substantive number of may fellow codgers who have problems with this change. Heck I think that many of them will have , like yours truly, already embraced the Paywave tech which makes the use of even a pin number largely obsolete.
Sometimes change is worthwhile but you won’t hear that said often from me.
Cheers Comrades
I have added a donation button the the blog, sadly It does not work if readers just wave their credit card over it …….
Iain Hall's SANDPIT 
Yep, I like this tech but you do need to be careful of contactless pickpockets.
Yes Matt
there are always pitfalls with any new tech but I think that they are out weighed by the benefits, most notably just how quick it is to make a transactions. My brother who is in the food business says “I love PayWave because it makes me money” This tech is going to be really big because it works well on both sides of the transaction.
Hi Iain, I do agree, I think the benefits outweigh the shortcomings, but it is something to be mindful of (call me paranoid and cautious: like the number of people who do not passcode protect there mobiles, staggers me). I like the $100 cap on my paywave feature, as it limits how much I can be defrauded. And then the banks these days do seem to be pretty quick to recognise and reimburse for this.
I actually had a call a couple of years back from my bank saying that because I had shopped at a business where skimming devices had been found, they would cancel and replace my card. Pretty cool!
Yeah the banks are getting better at addressing issues with EFTPOS because they know that service is everything. However that may change when the service gets to be even more embedded in the economy
Chip everyone at birth. It’s the only thing that makes sense.