The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is India’s Central Banking Institution, which controls the Monetary Policy of the Indian Rupee and other banks operating within India. Sometimes, RBI is well known for its stupidest decisions.
Last December (2013), under the heading of the new Governor, there was a decision for increase in security by inputting the PIN at POS for transactions. Upto me this is one of the wrong decision take by RBI.
A latest statistics quotes that the Debit / Credit Card are owned by 67% of the Upper Middle Class and High Class people across India. Of this the most of them are of high class. Just imagine for each and every transaction would the CEO go down to the cash counter to input the PIN? Or will he get down from the car while fueling up? No for both the cases, he needs to share his/her PIN to sub-ordinates or to the person who serves him. This is a very serious threat.
Same way, I was in an average hotel a week ago. I happened to counter one of the balance 33% of the card users of India who are poor enough / villagers. Here after the dinner was over he had to give his SBI Debit Card to the waiter for settlement of the bill. He forgot to disclose the PIN to the waiter, so with almost 25 tables across he shouted like “Velu, the PIN number of card is 8866”. All the people who were in the hotel turned towards the card user, but he didn’t care about it. He started putting betel into his mouth. After few minutes the issue passified and the waiter came with the charge-slip and got the initials.
Now just imagine, if the card is lost at the next moment or while he is leaving the hotel, wouldn’t it be a serious threat?
Solution : The Banks should be instructed for the customer to be given with 2 PINs. One for Cash Transactions and another for POS transaction with a special condition that both of them shouldn’t be equal to each other. Only this method could save people’s money.
