Banking - Cards : Not happy with present PIN request at purchase

[sling-shot]

Recently our esteemed RBI has made it compulsory to enter PIN for all debit card based transactions at merchant establishments. I feel this was a move thought of in a meeting room with complete disregard to the actual usage scenario.

PIN is the one immutable, really secret data regarding our card. Because almost all other data can be easily obtained by different methods eg. Name, card validity, CVV number, date of birth (every tom dick and harry website, local shop with membership wants your DOB), mobile number etc. PIN then becomes the only really secret authentication that remains in your control. (Mobile OTP is almost useless in many situations because your wife/close family /close friends may have physical access to your phone)

Now these guys had to go and force us to enter this PIN at various public places where one could be easily observed unknowingly and also recorded for later playback/number guessing. No method of easily obscuring this process of PIN entry will work. Or else you will have to do odd things to protect your PIN possibly provoking people to think either you are a loon or you have multiple crores in your account making a nice target.

I am scared to use my card anymore.

 

[theterminator]

Yes, its a tough decision for those at the board meetings. If these POS's didn't require PIN then there was the risk of loosing all your money if your card is lost. Ofcourse you may argue that Cards can be blocked but it may occur that before you gave request for blocking, somebody swiped it already. Sometimes you may not notice that your card isn't there in your pocket because how often do you take it out. We mostly purchase things online where your password managers or your memory does the job. So, we can give suggestions on what could be done instead of complaining.

 

[skeletor]

Let's add one more PIN.

One for payments on POS, and the other one for ATM cash withdrawal!

 

[tkin]

Let's add one more PIN.

One for payments on POS, and the other one for ATM cash withdrawal!

Perfect solution, in fact we already have a Verified by visa/mastercard securecode for online purchase, another pin won't hurt.

 

[sling-shot]

ATM PIN is also used for authentication in password recovery and phone banking. So yes it is much more important to keep it secret. In fact the cameras in ATMs are placed such that they can't see the keypad.

A second PIN may work.