From tomorrow, people with chip and PIN cards will no longer be able to verify a purchase by signing a receipt, but will instead have to key in their personal identification number.

New research suggests that more than five million people have yet to memorise the code. The study, by the analysts TNS Financial and Professional Services, found that one in ten people does not even know about tomorrrow’s deadline.

In anticipation of long queues at checkouts and frustrated customers who are not allowed to sign for their goods, shopworkers’ unions have urged shopowners to ensure that staff are properly trained to cope with flared tempers. “What is needed is a sensitive and mature response to any problems that arise,” Paul Clarke, spokesman for Usdaw, said. “Retailers have to make sure that people leave with the goods and their dignity intact.”

Of the 130 million chip and PIN cards now in circulation, about 100,000 chip and signature cards have been issued to elderly people or those with disabilities, according to APACS, the trade association for the payments industry. And campaigners say that hundreds of thousands of older people could be forced to abandon their weekly shop.

The National Consumer Council recently estimated that as many as three million elderly and disabled people could struggle to use the cards.

Last night the charity Help the Aged expressed serious concern that too few older people, whose failing sight, arthritis, or memory and mobility problems make it difficult for them to use the chip and PIN system, were being made aware of alternative methods of payments.

Gemma Lass, spokesperson for Help the Aged, said that the charity was deeply concerned at reports that stores were already refusing legitimate chip and signature cards.

“Card providers are at risk of leaving older people stranded at the checkout and humiliated through want of better communication with the public,” she said. “Visually impaired older people or those who have problems remembering numbers should neither be discriminated against nor stigmatised.”

Ms Lass cited the case of an elderly lady with Parkinson’s disease who contacted the charity after she was wrongly informed by a shop that she would need a photographic form of identification and a document explaining the nature of her illness and how it prevented her from making a chip and PIN payment.

Chip and PIN cards were introduced in Britain after card fraud losses were projected to reach £1 billion by 2008. Britain has been slow to introduce the new system compared with its European neighbours — France has operated a domestic PIN-based system since the 1990s.

The cards aim to combat fraud with a microchip that can store information more securely than a magnetic strip, meaning that cards cannot be copied or “skimmed”. Verifying a transaction using a PIN rather than a signature also makes it harder for criminals to use lost or stolen cards.

Even before implementation of the new cards has been completed, the system appears to have had a big impact on fraud. Figures from APACS for the first six months of last year showed a 31 per cent fall in counterfeit fraud losses to £45.6 million, and a 27 per cent fall in losses on lost and stolen to £44.3 million.

Despite the apparent benefits of the new system to both consumers and the industry, about 10 per cent of the nation’s tills have not yet been switched over to chip and PIN. Scores of B&Q stores as well as many smaller shops and restaurants are still unprepared. So, too, are some branches of Waitrose and BhS.

TNS Financial and Professional Services surveyed 1,100 people.

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CHIP AND FRAUD

• Nearly 130 million chip and PIN cards have been issued, out of a total of 141 million credit and debit cards in Britain
  
  
• Total card fraud in Britain in 2004 reached £505 million
  
  
• About £1.4 million is lost to card fraudsters every day
  
  
• On average an incidence of card fraud takes place every eight seconds
  
  
• One in three people has been a victim of card fraud
  
  
• The biggest fraud type is “card-not-present” fraud, which in 2004 cost £151 million. This is fraud associated with cards used over the telephone, internet or for mail order
  
  
• Without the introduction of chip and PIN, card fraud was expected to reach £800 million by the end of last year
  
  
• More than 100,000 chip and signature cards have been issued to people who are unable to use a PIN
  
  
• The chip and PIN system has cost banks and retailers about £1.1 billion to introduce

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