Bank rant!
Ok, today I went to the bank (Scotiabank, if you care to know) because I lost my debit card, and in the bank there was a poster hawking the new chip and pin debit and visa cards. There have been a lot of commercials by visa and the banks about this stuff. I figured I would jump, so I said I wanted one. First, they had to give me a regular and immediately cut it up to give me the chip and PIN card. Yup, bank operations make a ton of sense! /sarcasm
So I plugged the card into the bank reader and the teller shoots it up with my info. I ask the obvious question, whether or not the chip will work with the older ATM’s, and she says no. These machines have got to be 10 years old, but the saddest part is they only recently replaced their old monochrome screen machines. Plus, the UI on all of their machines sucks. When you want to withdraw money, you have to enter a number value and make sure its a multiple of twenty. Most other banks have the most common multiples of 20 preset onto the side buttons, and give you the option to punch it in.
So then I go to try it out. I head to the grocery store and get some lunch. When I get to pay, I use the chip slot on the keypad. I wait for five seconds and … nothing happens. Then the cashier looks at me like I’m an idiot and tries to show me how to swipe a card. I come to the conclusion that their cashier system hasn’t been updated to work with the chip reader.
So the whole push to get these cards is pointless. If the ATM’s don’t have it, and the stores without the readers don’t have it, and the stores WITH the new readers but don’t give a shit about setting them up, there is no added security.
My $0.02.