Why signatures beat selfies

The big banking story this year is about embedded microchips and the machines that read them. The new rules made U.S. retailers nervous because of the liability shift that goes with the new technology; if the store isn't using it and there's a fraudulent transaction, the retailer can be on the hook. And if the retailer's bank declined to use the new system, the liability can fall to the financial institution.

In more entertaining fraud-prevention news (there's a phrase you never expected to hear), MasterCard is also toying with identity verification via facial recognition software; in other words, a selfie.

All that is to the detriment of the centuries-old method of identification: the signature.

Last week, NPR re-broadcast a 2014 Planet Money story about the history of the signature. Experts told host David Kestenbaum that although signatures have been the verification method of choice for more than 1,000 years they're mentioned in the Talmud, with rules about legibility as a practical tool they're passé. No longer do roomfuls of clerks sequestered in a basement dutifully compare the signature on your check to the one on the signature card. Pen strokes are giving way to PIN pads and passwords, thumbprints and selfies.

Twenty-five years ago we bemoaned the demise of the handwritten letter. The elegance of a carefully worded expression of love, thanks or concern set to thick cotton paper in a delicate hand has given way to digital sentence fragments embellished not with opulent wax seals but with cartoonish iconography. Nothing says love like a wildly grinning yellow face with dancing hearts for eyes.

The fraud-prevention squads think the signature is a romantic obsolescence, ready to be flung upon the techno trash heap with typewriters, leather-bound books and fourth-grade cursive. But they are missing the rest of it, that the act of signing one's name carries emotional weight; that it matters to the signatory in a much different way than the security of his PIN (never your birthday!) or uniquely identifying whorls and ridges on her thumb.

A signature is more like graffiti. It possesses an element of self-expression and an inherent, active statement that one was present and approved. My thumbprint is a genetic accident over which I had no control and my PIN is a series of numbers anyone could have selected or typed into the machine. But when I sign, I place a mark of my own design unlike any other. I remember consciously designing my signature at age 13 when I opened my first checking account. I practiced different versions of the T in Ted and the S in Streuli until I found my look. In retrospect, others did it with a lot more flair. Walt Disney signed his name with a drawing of Mickey Mouse. Jay Leno signs with a crude self-portrait; Kurt Vonnegut with a better one. German artist Albrecht Dürer signed his name with a stylized AD that looks a little like a pagoda or a gong.

If I am a chef, I have a signature dish; if I am an artist I have a signature work. A signature is a creative manifestation of one's self.

Whether it's a scribble or a sketch, John Hancock's prized penmanship our Treasury Secretary Jack Lew's illegible ringlets, a signature says, "I was here. I acted. I approved this." It's more than a rudimentary form of identification; it's a personal statement that can't be matched by punching in four (not your birthday!) numbers or putting your thumb on a scanner, no matter how much that makes you feel like 007.

Published: Fri, Sep 11, 2015