CHICAGO – The battle over PIN versus signatures when customers use debit cards continues as Visa filed a lawsuit against Walmart this week, Reuters reports. The suit claims Walmart superstitiously piloted a payment system that skipped signature verification in favor of PIN transactions for Visa debit card transactions. 

In its own lawsuit, Visa alleged Walmart neglected to let the company know about the PIN-only policy, resulting in a large decline in Visa debit-card transactions at the discount retailer locations, as well as an increased number of customer complaints about having to use a PIN. “Instead of complying with the terms of the commercial agreement that the two companies negotiated and agreed to in 2015, Walmart is attempting to avoid its obligation to provide a signature option for their customers when paying with a Visa debit card,” Visa said.

“We have rightfully insisted on the use of PINs for debit card transactions in our stores, while Visa has continued to demand the more fraud-prone signature verification which is more profitable to them,” said Randy Hargrove, spokesman for Walmart.

Earlier this spring, Walmart sued Visa over the firm’s resistance to personal identification numbers (PINs) for debit cards used by customers for Walmart purchases. This week, Kroger filed a similar lawsuit against Visa. A few weeks ago, Home Depot filed suit against MasterCard and Visa alleging antitrust violations related to the two card companies refusing to adopt more secure chip-and-PIN technology to keep profits and market dominance.