Foreign Perspectives

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One of the great things about the introduction of the chip & PIN technology was that it greatly increased security in the sense that you were no longer relying on the shop assistants comparing your signature against that on the back of the card.

If you’d been carrying the card around for a year or two chances are that the signature was barely visible but that rarely mattered anyway given the cursory glance of most shop assistants. Once the novelty value of the photo cards had dwindled it mattered little what photo was on the card although the current rarity of those cards does offer a measure of additional security to those who have them.

However, the problem is that your PIN is required EVERYWHERE. Fair enough when you’re buying something in a shop although it’s a little too easy to watch someone entering their PIN in a lot of locations and there’s a tendency for the person behind you in the queue to get so close that they can easily see your PIN. However, why the need to enter the PIN when you make a deposit in the post office? Not only are post office keypads more visible than most but why the need to identify yourself when making a deposit at all?
After all, the Halifax are able to take machine deposits without a PIN. Why can’t the post office?

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One of the problems in the recent round of bank takeovers is that the vast majority were shotgun weddings with little consideration being given to the fit between the banking cultures involved.

Already it would seem that the Halifax will be needing some exit signs for their current customers through a combination of tightening up of the lending criteria and raising of charges to the level typical of Lloyds. Both are understandable in different ways. The more lax lending at the Halifax was quite a contributing factor to its downfall and, of course, it would hardly be sustainable for overall charges in the Halifax to be lower than at Lloyds itself.

Still, it is sad to see the demise of the Halifax.

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Whilst I’m sure that many have grown accustomed to having their card declined in recent months due to unannounced and often substantial credit limit reductions, the new HSBC fraud prevention software is sure to increase rejections still further.

As always, where you’re liable to find that your card is declined is when you’re making a transaction that/s outside your normal day to day habits. For example, if you use your card on holiday without telling the bank in advance then it’s much more likely that you will get your transactions rejected from the start rather than after a few days as would have happened previously. Similarly, if it’s a card that you save up for special occasions then you’ll find it rejected when you try to use it.

To avoid serious inconvenience for yourself, it’s best to travel around (at home and abroad) with a minimum of two cards issued by different banks. Worth noting is that some banks issue cards under many different flags so make sure that it really is a different bank that issues your backup card. Don’t forget that you should have a Visa branded and a Mastercard branded card for holiday purposes as not all countries accept both equally.

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