The signature has distinguished origins as a means to authenticate identity, but it’s clear its day has long passed. (Just look at the illegible smudge your finger makes on your cabbie’s phone to pay for your ride.) Many consumers report that they have signed with smiley faces for years.

But the card networks seem to be bringing this foolishness to an end, at long last. (Observers outside the U.S. are bewildered Americans still sign anything, whether it’s checks or otherwise.) Mastercard, not as fond of the signature as Visa, announced it was retiring them for good last week. Security expert Brian Krebs bemoaned the push for chip-and-signature over chip-and-PIN back in 2014, when EMV cards were just reaching the bulk of consumers. Visa was the prime mover behind this push. (U.S. consumers using debit at the point-of-sale often saw a choice between US Debit or Visa Debit. The former asked for a PIN, while the latter asked for a signature.)

Those days may soon be behind us! But Square and other vendors that serve small merchants are in no hurry — small merchants naturally being more conservative and slower to change. So it will still be a while before we can dispense with that index-finger signature on your cab driver’s phone.

Yes, cryptocurrencies are silly. But a quick reminder: every day one million people draw penises in the “signature” box on credit card point of sale terminals, and nobody ever says anything about that.

— Matthew Green (@matthew_d_green) April 8, 2018

Read more at The New York Times