Chips With Everything
One of this morning's papers (a tabloid - they all blur beyond a certain point) appears to have given up reporting the news and gone over wholesale to clairvoyancy, predicting as they do in their front page story that Chip and PIN 'chaos' is going to strike the nation on Wednesday.
I'm trying to get my head round this whole thing and I'm afraid I'm coming up blank.
Practically everyone who has a plastic card will have a PIN for it already, so it's not as though the very concept is alien.
Add to that the fact that if people don't yet have a chipped card they can sign just like they did in the past, and the whole thing begins to reek of fabricated panic.
In fact, am I the only one who can smell the unmistakable aroma of Millennium Bug scare stories around the place?
February 14th, 2006 - 16:10
The point is they won’t be able to sign for it like in the old days – retailers will be entitled to only accept PIN codes and not signatures.
Besides, I’ve got an American Express credit card with chip – but no pin. Figures, eh?
February 14th, 2006 - 20:26
Isn’t the point that if a card doesn’t have a chip then the retailer will have to accept a signature? That’s what it says on the Chip and Pin site [my bolding]:
There are some important exceptions where signature will be accepted. These are:
* cardholders who have old style cards and are waiting for their new chip and PIN cards;
* overseas cardholders that have cards that have not been upgraded to chip and PIN
* disabled cardholders who are unable to use PIN and have requested a chip and signature card
* for all cardholders in shops which have not upgraded to chip and PIN equipment
Though the Amex issue sounds like bad organisation on their part