Frequently Asked QuestionsAre physical signatures needed?
You might have heard in the news that the card companies are moving away from requiring signatures. All 4 card brands are making similar announcements, but each has their own spin on the change.
MasterCard, Amex, and Discover are removing the requirement of collecting a cardholder signature at the point of sale on a sales draft. Visa specifies that the requirement is only removed on EMV transactions.
Because this requirement applied mainly to Card Present transactions, the removal of the requirement has less impact on the Vacation Rental industry or other industries that process mostly Card Not Present (CNP) transactions.
Despite the change, you can still collect signatures and we still recommend that you do in order to help protect your business against frivolous chargebacks.
As mentioned in our other article “How Will Visa’s Claims Resolution Impact Your Business?”, Visa recently came out with significant changes to their chargeback process that makes it more important than ever that you have proof that the cardholder authorized the transaction and agreed to your terms.
Given Visa’s chargeback process update and the challenges of processing in a CNP environment, we still strongly recommend you help protect yourself against chargebacks by at least
- passing AVS and CVV data and possibly declining transactions with data that doesn’t match with the issuer’s information
- collecting a physical signature from the cardholder on your agreement, agreeing to the total due and your terms
If you have any questions, please contact support@ascentpaymentsolutions.com.
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