Bag's Rants

Chip and PIN. Its time is near. Are you ready?

Booking out of the Novotel today and the receptionist pointed to a sign about Chip and PIN which is being made compulsory on Feb 14th. I, of course, have forgotten mine. This article I found talks about the difficulty some people will have with the new system. They won't be the only ones.

Chip and PIN is where people enter a PIN instead of signing for something. Signing is not allowed. It's been on the continent for years but for some reason we have not put it in. It has several advantages all for the credit card companies. Signatures can be forged. The PIN allows two factor authentication of the transaction and is a confirmation of your identity as the PIN is only supposed to be known to you. This will result in less losses to the card issuer and more profit. It's already cut down fraud in it's initial, non compulsory, rollout.

Of course if your card is used fraudulently you will have less chance of being believed.

All in all I think it is a good idea but as in all things the crooks will adapt and move on to card skimmers and maybe coercing people to give up the PIN.

For me it means I will have to move on to two credit cards so I can remember the PINs. Not for me is one PIN for all and I have half a dozen cards to remember plus everything else. I'm not ready but I'm as ready as I'm going to be.

It will also be interesting at the checkouts on the 15th. I'll do all my shopping a couple of days before. How many people will actually be standing behind £200 of shopping with a bewildered look on their face and a credit card in their hand?

posted by Bag @ 12:31 pm