curiousIt's a pleasant Friday afternoon at a sprawling department store in central Mumbai. But I'm uneasy. It's a crime to use another person's credit card, and here I am, a man, using a woman's card with her photograph on it.
I hand my four purchases to the cashier who looks bored as he holds a scanner over their bar-coded price tags. He then takes the credit card I proffer him and swipes it through an electronic data capture machine or EDC, which okays the card in seconds and whirs out two transaction slips.
Avoiding any eye contact with the cashier, I sign the top slip and hand both back. He returns the card, a bill for Rs.4185 and my copy of the slip. Not once did he look at the card, ler alone the woman's photo on it. Not did he compare my signature on the slips to the one on the card.
Heh. That so happens all the time. No one verifies the stuff on the card.
