Visa Inc. will stop requiring signatures for purchases made in North America using chip-card technology, a significant win for big brick-and-mortar retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. that could help them cut the cost of accepting plastic.
The move takes effect in April for more than 2.5 million merchant locations with terminals equipped to read so-called EMV-chip cards, San Francisco-based Visa said Friday in a statement. Roughly a quarter of transactions on its payments network currently require a signature.