ChipPIN' away at my patience

lol sorry people, i meant 1 hand 2 cover, the other 2 enter pin......

dam drink,,,,,

 

I live in Australia, and I was so shocked that UK is only just now getting something like this that I couldn't understand what the article was about at first.

In Australia, the most common configuration for years was to have the unit split into two parts; a processing box and a handheld keypad & display attached by a coiled cord. With components becoming cheaper and smaller, most places have changed over again to newer units with everything in the handheld keypad, including the magnetic scanner.

The units are produced for and rented from the major banks and credit unions here, rather than a central body as Chip & PIN seems to be. All the banks are linked to each other, so even if you go to a store and they have, say Westpac terminals on the Westpac service, you can still use your ANZ, Commonwealth, etc card, at no extra cost. The terminals come in two flavours - dial-up for small shops to plug directly into a phone line, but now more common with ADSL etc is the Ethernet version which was originally designed for large retailers.

There was also a wireless version introduced, but in restaurants and such they usually just have a normal terminal at the register and you have to go up and pay as normal. If you order a pizza or other home-delivered food, you can usually ask them to bring a wireless terminal with your order, but most people find just as easy to nip down to the shops and go to the ATM while waiting for the order to arrive, especially as there is no cash out option with pizza delivery. The larger chains also allow credit card payments, but in that case they usually do the whole thing over the phone, so that when your food arrives, you just accept it and say thankyou You don't even need to sign as the transaction is completed as a proxy purchase, so they use the little code on the signature strip as extra security.

I mentioned cash out before. I don't know if you guys have this, but since most banks have a small charge each time you use your debit card, even at an ATM, most businesses now offer cash out with a purchase. It's even built into the terminals. That is, say you bought something for $12.95. You could ask for another $30 cash out. Your account will be billed $42.95 and the cashier will give you $30 "change". I find that my local McDonalds is very useful for scraping the last bit of change from my account by buying a 50c ice-cream cone and getting cash out, as ATMs here haven't given out anything smaller than $20 for years now.

All that said, the EFTPOS system (in Australia, it's called Electronic Funds Transfer - Point Of Sale) still only uses PINs for debit card purchases. Most banks have PINs attached to their credit cards, but these are only for use at ATMs; a signature is still required at the register when making a credit card purchase. As other people here have said, considering how often my signature is actually checked at the register, I think I'd prefer a PIN for that, too.

Nezuji

 

they should use chip & sig.
i.e. put the signature sample on the chip, and make it so only the shop staff can see it.

 

You will find that the UK is behind on most stuff. We are kind of the technological and social backwater of Europe.

It's a bit like when they introduced demical money (before, there was 144 pence in a pound). They interviewed old women for the TV news saying things like "ooh no, I won't be using it!" Same with the law requiring car seat belts to be worn - people made a lot of noise about it treading on the civil liberties and rights. That would be their right to die horribly and unneccesarily, taking others with them I presume. Now everyone takes it for granted, much like they will six months after smoking is banned in public places.

In short, the England is ultra-conservative.

 

A few people have tried to make me pay by chip and pin but they always struggle because there's no chip on my switch card. There always comes a look of confusion when the chip-reader moans at them.

I've finally been forced to order a new card though because the signature on my current one has just smudged and dissappeared beyond all trace. It's not that people don't think it matches what I sign on the receipt, just that there's nothing on the card to check. That said, in most places they look at teh back of the card, see there's blatantly nothing there 'cause it's rubbed off and you just see it in there eyes *I really can't be arsed asking for more ID, what do I care, it's not my shop?* "There you go Sir, your card and receipt".

Oh, and that Zug thing is fuppin funny!

 

Wow, this old subject back from the dead. Nothing really new here, press got bored of it ages ago. Another school essay.

 

That sounded really silly at first, but the more I think about it the better it seems. An on-the-spot signature is theoretically more secure than a PIN, and maybe having it "hidden" on the card would make apathetic cashiers feel special enough to actually check the damn thing.

I maintain that cashiers never check signatures because they're generally too young to have credit cards of their own, so they don't care. But then, in the UK, since you've had to sign for debit cards too... well that blows my theory out of the water

Nezuji

 

As to the biometrics thing, I bought a jumper in Burtons last year and they took a thumbprint (as well as a signature) which I thought was good. I mean if someone did forge your sig (and steal your card) at least they had the thumbprint to track down whoever used it (provided whoever done it has a record or whatever)...

 

i'm not sure if they're allowed to keep the thumbprint record - only compare with the stored one.
(i could be wrong, but it wouldn't surprise me)

 

Whilst I appreciate constructive critisism (which this isn't, seeing my column is completely relevant), feel free not to read my columns if they bore you so much.

 

I think that's shocking! Since when does a private company have the right to ask for a thumb print? I would have refused, and taken by business elsewhere if I had been asked.

 

I will never get a pin number on my credit card, as that allows me to get cash out at there insane interest rates, which is a bad thing when you have little self control of spending when drunk.

And what does the consumer have to worry about there card being stolen and a signature forged? Chargebacks on credit cards are all the merchants problem, if they are slack about checking the signature, its there loss, not the person whos card was stolen.