Contact-less Cards and No Signature Payments

Asaf Buchner | May 24, 2006, 10:14 AM

I had a few instances recently where I paid with an American Express credit card and was not required to sign the receipt (my card was just swiped). Other payment networks have similar programs that allow merchants to forgo the signature for purchases below $25. Security aside, it is pretty cool and does save a few seconds of annoying wait. However, it still feels strange and confusing, especially since not all merchants adopted this feature, so I never know what to expect.

On a related note, one of the selling points for contact-less credit cards is that they save time. My colleague who built our contact-less payment forecast [clients] often raises the issue of where the timesaving really comes from. Namely, given that many contact-less purchases will be below $25 and will therefore not require a signature, is there a significant incremental timesaving from the contact-less element?