On 11/27/2011 09:25 AM, Binand Sethumadhavan wrote:
On 26 November 2011 23:14, Rony gnulinuxist@gmail.com wrote:
Nowadays certain 'Big...' shopping malls do not accept debit cards which have PIN codes. They want cards that can be swiped without any PIN authentication. This is a security risk if the card is stolen. It is simply hard cash in the thief's hand. I use netbanking only to pay bills.
Are you talking of the "Chip and Pin" cards? As far as I know, they are not mandatory in India, and the PoS devices required for them are still not available. Anyway researchers have proved that despite all the claims by the banks, they aren't any better. See, for example:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/12/chip_pin_security_unpicked/
All these cards do is to allow the banks to blame the consumers for everything. A sort of risk transfer. :-)
Also remember, if a store displays the Visa logo and does not accept a card with the same logo, you can complain to Visa. This can potentially lead to the store being fined heavily and its merchant status cancelled.
The regular ATM cum debit cards. They have a PIN and the Big... malls say that their device is not working for PIN type cards and say they want PIN less ones. You have to spend half an hour trying to make a payment in these malls and finally go to the ATM to withdraw cash as their swiping devices don't work for PIN cards.