The value of a signature

How much is a signature worth? I photographed the ones above during a visit to Metropolitan Museum of New York, and they are obviously very valuable: Picasso always understood that his signature identified his work, which reflected the experience of a lifetime spent painting, and that in itself it was worth a great deal of money.

Mastercard, on the other hand, thinks the opposite: that a signature is worthless and wants to eliminate it completely from its transactions before April 2018. Trade associations agree, seeing a signature as cumbersome, slowing down the collection process and, arguing that it does not provide any additional security.

They’re right: a signature is a weak authentication method, providing no security as a verification system. This has been already said many times in recent years: signing a receipt for a purchase with a credit card is absurd, as is signing the card itself, although in theory our signature on the back of the card supposes the acceptance of the contract that allows you to use it as a means of payment. And what about the childlike scrawl we produce with our fingers on a screen as proof of the home delivery of merchandise? You might as well scribble anything: in the vast majority of cases, the person asking for your John Hancock is not concerned with comparing it with the one on the back of the credit card used to make the purchase.

Currently in the US, 80% of credit card transactions no longer require the signature of the user. In Europe, you only have to sign for your transactions in rare occasions, such as when you make a purchase on a high speed train in Spain. But now, Mastercard’s plan is to do away with the signature once and for all. The simple fact is that although it is used for all kinds of contracts, it is an absurd and outdated method. My daughter knows how to reproduce my signature with great accuracy, and I, at her age, could reproduce my father’s. Chips, tokenization and biometry are infinitely more logical substitutes adapted to our times. The fingerprint I use to unlock my smartphone and authorize Apple Pay in a store is a much safer proof of my identity than a scribble, or showing my identity card with a black and white photograph of a version of me that weighed twenty kilos more.

Why do we continue to value a signature and other methods of identification rooted in ancient history? Force of habit, custom. But customs change with the times and as technology evolves, albeit very slowly, usually over a generation. And sometimes, as in the case of signing credit cards, they lead to ridiculous situations. At some point, someone has to take a stand, assess the situation and resolve these contradictions.

(En espa?ol, aquí)