Because your card is MY responsibility

[Mystic]

Umm not ALL credit card companies. Some require them to ask for id.

Which ones require to ask for ID? I'm mainly talking about the 4 major companies.
MC, VISA, AMEX, Disc. I don't know of any other companies, to be quite honest. :P

I think, but not sure, that some stores won't take the CC if it has "Ask for ID" on the back of the card -- it may have to do with the card still not being signed.

I use to have that on my cards, but 90% of the people never asked for ID... hell, half of them never even looked at the back of my card. lol

[EricKei]

It varies, apparently, based on time and place. When I worked at a small, newly-built grocery in the 90's, the VISA rep trained us and stressed how CRITICAL it was to ALWAYS check ID on CC sales, no matter how small. A decade later at GameStore, the company has us check ID's (a customer is within their rights to refuse, but then we can turn down the sale) to the not insignificant number of complaints they receive about kids using Mommy's credit card without her permission to buy games. Nowadays, it seems that YMMV, even so. I don't really deal with this issue, as ALL of my cards can be used with or without a PIN. The next time I renew them, I'm gonna see if "picture on card" is available, tho >_>

[Andara Bledin]

Visa cards tend to have at least one of these features:
Itallised "V",
Micro-Printing around the visa logo (Looks like a Blue line around the Electron logo),
First 4 digits of PAN Printed on fron of card,
Holographic dove at some place along bottom of card on along the right on the rear,
3 digit security code (CVV) on signature strip (Surprisingly some fakes dont have these),
Embossing.

*checks both her credit and debit (hybrid) cards*
Well, the V isn't italicized - it seems they just have a slight stylization, now:

The micro-printing border is silver on the credit and gold on the debit.
The first four are stamped right below the raised numbers.
The dove is on the bottom left on the credit and middle right on the debit.
The CVV is just outside of the signature strip, and is stamped in.
There is also an stamping of the last four that is in the top right corner of the signature strip.
And, of course, the standard card info on the front is all in embossed letters and numbers.

Which ones require to ask for ID? I'm mainly talking about the 4 major companies.

MC, VISA, AMEX, Disc. I don't know of any other companies, to be quite honest. :P

Fun fact about AmEx is that they have very few rules as compared to the others, but they do have a rule that any rules that the other cards follow have to be applied to them if you take multiple cards. This is likely a lot of the reason that Costco will accept AmEx only and not any of the others.

^-.-^

[EricKei]

I actually have heard the complete opposite much more often -- places will take everything BUT AMEX -- but not for those reasons.

Mainly, merchants dislike the higher fees (as much as double) for running the cards, and their legendarily slow payments to merchants -- as slow as twice the time for the merchants to get their money, even tho AMEX demands nigh-immediate payment from much of their customer base.

I had heard that many places in Europe hate them even more at one point, as they could realistically expect to wait as long as FOUR MONTHS to get payments from AMEX (after the date of the original sale). I don't know if it's still that bad, but AMEX still has the bad rep.

[Andara Bledin]

My work didn't take AmEx for a long time, but we were losing sales over it... they charge a little bit more than the others and instead of 2 days, it takes 3 days to reconcile, but that's really nothing in the grand scheme of things.

^-.-^