Visa made an announcement this week that starting this summer it is not going to require signatures for transactions of twenty five dollars or less. It will most certainly bear the results of smoother and faster transactions but it could also chip away at the credit industry’s effort to move toward contactless technology.

The new policy takes effect in July and makes about ninety eight percent of more than eight hundred United States merchant categories in Visa’s system eligible able to accept their cards that are issued by U.S. banks with no signature. This opens the waiver to a ton of additional merchants and extends Visa’s current no signature rule which covers only twenty six merchant categories.

Visa says that the new policy means faster and more convenient and faster payments for people carrying credit cards. According to a survey, sixty nine percent of respondents say either convenience or speed is the main reason why they use a card. Also, the new policy may help issuers get into the cash dependent markets. In actuality, seventy five percent of cash transactions in the United States are less than twenty five dollars!

However, this move towards no signatures may trump the credit industry’s move towards contactless payments, which would speed up card transactions and prep the world for mobile payments.

Contactless technology works with radio waves that are transmitted by a special equipped chip card and will eliminate the need for a card swipe while simultaneously speeding up the time it takes to make a sale.

Visa doesn’t see a conflict of interests, alleging that it’s no signature rule and it’s contactless technology go hand in hand. It argues that these are complementary, with no signatures paving the way for contactless sales. To them, going signature free is just an initial step towards the newer technology.

Mallory Megan is employed by a debt collection company. Also she does stories on business, finance, credit industry and http://www.linkedin.com/companies/rapid-recovery-solution-inc.?trk=ppro_cprof&lnk=vw_cprofile Grab a totally unique version of this article from the Uber Article Directory