Everybody is suing! The state of North Carolina, the federal government and now Walmart. The retail giant announce this week that it is suing Visa for allowing customers to verify with a signature instead of a PIN with chip-enabled transactions. Wal-Mart says signature-based transactions are less secure and more expensive to conduct.
Wal-Mart has historically required their payment partners to allow customers to use PINs instead of signatures in order to prevent counterfeit card fraud. However, banks and payment network operators are increasingly favoring the use of chip cards verified by signatures and are curtailing further investment in (the more expensive) PIN technology.
Wal-Mart indicates in the suit that it believes Visa’s position creates risk to customers “and its actions and rules are inconsistent with federal law.”
Visa declined to comment.