This can be the four character word (read digit) which will define your love/hate moments, also known as your 4 dight PIN to swipe and use your ATM card.
All of you might now be aware that from 1st December 2013 RBI has mandated the keying in of your 4 dight pin for all transactions of your ATM. Obviously the move is to increase the security for the transactions of the ATM/debit cards and protect the user interest against mis use and usage by unauthorised persons.
Rajesh presented his debit card after dinner with his friends at a grand restaurant very recently, for his card to be swiped. He was unaware of the new regulation and was a little embarassed when he saw the waiter walking towards him with the swipe machine and asking him for the PIN. Instead of feeling it as his right to punch in the PIN discreetly in front of all, non-chalantly shouted out the PIN to the waiter from about a 6 feet distance.
One would never know what embarassments that would follow Rajesh if only the waiter of that swanky restaurant, decently educated that he is, just decides to keep a photocopy of his debit card.
Sunaina, a housewife always shopped with debit card of her husband near home at a reputed grocery chain. It was business as usual when she went for shopping on 1st December too, or so she thought. It was weekend rush and hardly did she know that the rule had come into effect. Never having ATMmed she did have the need to know the dreaded khulja sim sim magic word-aka debit card PIN.
So it followed that the card threw the pin challenge and Sunaina not knowing the reason started questioning the clerk at the counter. The clerk could not reason with her and called his supervisor and Sunaina being a weekend and regular shopper would not let go of her one hours sweat and toil. Finally Sunaina had to call her husband over phone and ask for the magic word and as her hands were full items bought, she repeated the PIN after him aloud as a way of sharing it with the counter clerk.
In most of the malls and shopping arcades the card swiping machine is kept very close to the telephone and the billing term inal-the pin that we enter gets noticed very easily. Hence there is a need to demand a little bit of privacy while we enterour PIN as it holds the key to our financial everything.
We may feel that this is getting a little over done here now. But it is not over. With mobile phone becoming the next important valuable after our wallet, most of us have adapted to storing our personal details such as address and other important details/things to do in our phone,
So did RBI make an injudicious regualtion that does more harm than offer security? Not at all.
Having said that, as much as RBI is trying to increase the fence for protecting our interest, we ourselves should be in doing so. With the advent of technology the ways and means of making payment, banking and transferring money have changed have increased manifold. With Mobile banking M.money has become a reality.
So with ATM/Credit card pin stored in mobile phone, what if one of the ladies who invariably carry her slim phone in her clutch at happens to lost the same. Very soon it can be a matter of losing out most of the valuables, money and everything in a jiffy.
While safekeeping our gadgets from being lost has become imperative, time has come that we handle them with greater sensitivity and care even while in our safe custody.