Hacker News Reader

Comment by meragrin_ | Hacker News Reader

> What about it is inconvenient?

You have to remember not one, not two, not three, but several digits. Not only that. You have to look at a keypad. Oh, and you have to push buttons. Not once, not twice, but several times! Pity the poor fool who accidentally pushes the wrong button. More looking at a keypad and button pushing!

Yeah, I don't get it either. My only guess is the customer support calls for forgotten pins are more expensive to deal with than dealing with the incidents of fraud the pin would prevent.

View on HN

Don't they have to deal with those forgotten PIN calls anyway? Don't you need a PIN to get cash out of an ATM?

My debit card and its PIN are used for a few different things - in-store payments, using the ATM, and authenticating when in-person at a bank. The last one is interesting - each desk at the bank, both the tellers and the offices where you talk to someone, has a terminal and every interaction starts with putting in your debit card and entering your PIN.

Extending this to credit card is no big deal - my main bank syncs the PIN between the debit and credit cards. I only have a credit card with the other bank that I use and I haven't set foot in one of their branches in 20 years, so I have no idea whether they sync the PINs or use their cards for in-person authentication.

Imagine that in this other alien culture, most people were using credit cards for most transactions and rarely ever use their ATM/debit card. They don't have a day to day use for cash so do not frequent ATMs nor do they have much reason to frequent bank branches.

They've been presenting a credit card and making a squiggle with a pen for years and never remembered a PIN at all. Their credit card bill is paid electronically online somehow, either automatically because of a direct debit configuration setup years before or via an interactive banking website. These were authenticated with a web password and perhaps archaic knowledge of a routing number and checking account nunber. No PIN in sight there either...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com