WASHINGTON — A familiar ritual at the sales register will soon be going away, and the hope is the new routine will reduce fraud.
Beginning in October 2015, Mastercard and Visa will switch to a system that requires credit card users to swipe the card, then enter a PIN number, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Completing a credit-card sale has typically involved either handing your card to the clerk or swiping it on a card reader, then signing the receipt. With the new system, users will put the card into a slot and then enter a PIN number, just like people do in much of the rest of the world.
Executives have told Congress the new system will sharply curtail credit-card hacking.
The U.S. is the last major market to still use the old-fashioned signature system, according to the Wall Street Journal.
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- Target security breach: How to get a free credit report
- Consumer expert: Don’t use debit cards following Target breach
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