The End of the Swipe-and-Sign Credit Card ⇥ blogs.wsj.com

Tom Gara, of the Wall Street Journal:

Beginning later next year, you will stop swiping the credit card. Instead, you will insert your card into a slot, just like people do in much of the rest of the world, where the machine will read a microchip, not a magnetic stripe. You’ll still be signing for the time being, but the new system also enables the use of PIN numbers, if card issuers decide to add them to their cards.

We’ve had chip-and-PIN cards in Canada for several years now and, while not 100% perfect, they’re vastly more secure than the old swipe-and-sign cards while taking about the same amount of time to complete the transaction. It’s about time the United States got on board with this.