Did you know that when you swipe your debit card and sign for your purchase the merchant pays your bank double than if you enter your four-digit code? “The difference is so large that Costco will not allow you to sign for your debit purchase in its checkout lines. Wal-Mart and Home Depot steer customers to use a PIN, the debit card norm outside the United States.

Despite all this, signature debit cards dominate debit use in this country, accounting for 61 percent of all such transactions, even though PIN debit cards are less expensive and less vulnerable to fraud.

How this came to be is largely a result of a successful if controversial strategy hatched decades ago by Visa, the dominant payment network for credit and debit cards. It is an approach that has benefitted Visa and the nation’s banks at the expense of merchants and, some argue, consumers.”

You can read the full story at: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/6798782.html

Michelle