[exelius]

The signature is for identification after the fact. So if someone steals your card, the credit card company can look at the signature for that transaction versus 10 other signatures for valid transactions and quickly know if it was your signature or not.

That said, I don't think we will ever live in a cash-less world. There are too many merchants for whom any technology is too much. Also, a lot of merchants don't want to pay credit card processing fees (which I expect don't go away with this system) and still others like to cheat on their taxes and running a cash business makes that easier.