Original post author: Ryan If you're anything like me, you've grown accustomed to the procedures we all must follow when making a credit or debit card purchase. But now I invite you to pause and take a critical look at the absolute disaster that is paying with cards. There is no consistency. Sometimes you must swipe, sometimes you must insert. Sometimes they have the equipment for you to insert, but they still want you to swipe. This is the check out line, why do you need to make it awkward like a first date? Some cards (mine included) also allow you to tap the card reader instead (no swipe or insert). This is a really good feature if you want to look even dumber by banging your card into the reader like a cave man. After the fourth slam the cashier will finally tell you that the wireless feature is disabled. If you're using debit, you need to enter a pin...except for those times when they randomly don't need your pin. Sometimes they run the debit card as if it's a credit card and you need to sign. Oh and when you're at a gas station you just need to enter your zip...even though that makes no sense from a security and convenience standpoint. Oh yeah, and sometimes you need to enter that CVV2 number, particularly when you're shopping online - what's the deal with that? Do scammers lack the fine motor skills to flip a debit card over? We seem to be cool with less security on credit cards, because they only require a signature rather than a pin. Is the signature doing anything at all? Nobody compares your signature to the one on the back of your card. How could they? By the time you sign your card is back in your wallet. You think the back-end computer systems are doing some advanced machine-based signature comparison, but they aren't. I know this because I often draw doodles on the electronic card signature lines, and I've never run into a problem. God bless you if you wrote "See ID" on the back of your card, because you're opening yourself up to yet another possible curveball during the transaction.
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