>They want to make sure you hadn't intentionally produced two different signatures. I think, in theory, you could later dispute the charge and the merchant would have nothing on you, if the signature didn't match the one on the card.
It certainly seems to be pretty useless though, and most stores just ignore the signature.
I recall being at a liquor store with my mother (15 years ago or so) and she was buying a bunch of wine. We got to the checkout and she decided she was going back to the car and handed me her credit card in full view of the cashier.
After the cashier ran the credit card, I had to sign the receipt. Since she'd seen my mother hand me the card, I asked the cashier (a teenage or early 20s American) "what dead president's name should I sign the receipt with?" (note that this is in the US)
Depressingly, she replied "Benjamin Franklin." (N.B., for non USAians, while Franklin was a very important member of our founding generation, he was never president).
As such, at least in my experience, it's been a very long time since anyone really cared about signatures on credit card receipts.
These days (in the US, and for much longer elsewhere), chip and PIN are king.
It certainly seems to be pretty useless though, and most stores just ignore the signature.
I recall being at a liquor store with my mother (15 years ago or so) and she was buying a bunch of wine. We got to the checkout and she decided she was going back to the car and handed me her credit card in full view of the cashier.
After the cashier ran the credit card, I had to sign the receipt. Since she'd seen my mother hand me the card, I asked the cashier (a teenage or early 20s American) "what dead president's name should I sign the receipt with?" (note that this is in the US)
Depressingly, she replied "Benjamin Franklin." (N.B., for non USAians, while Franklin was a very important member of our founding generation, he was never president).
As such, at least in my experience, it's been a very long time since anyone really cared about signatures on credit card receipts.
These days (in the US, and for much longer elsewhere), chip and PIN are king.