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.
