Credit card pin numbers – some sensible precautions

Although it seems that more of us are using cash instead of credit cards, those plastic friends of ours still see lots of action. An increasing number of people have more than one credit card in their wallet or purse, increasing the potential for fraud, if we are not careful with our pin numbers.

Apparently, according to new research by MoneySupermarket.com, 10,000,000 of us use the same pin numbers for all our credit and debit cards. That approach makes it easy to switch from card to card, of course, but what if you lose your wallet or your purse gets stolen? The risks of losing money through fraud is so much greater if one of your card pin numbers falls into the wrong hands.

Personally, I take care to use different pin numbers for each of my credit and debit cards. I use pin numbers that are simple to remember either through some simple mathematical sum or because they form a memorable date – but never part of my date of birth, for example.

I also try and minimise the number of credit cards that I carry around, and hence have to remember the pin numbers for – its a good way of saving money too!

Changing your pin number is easy and often just entails visiting the cashpoint machine at a branch of your bank. Type in the current pin number (if you can remember it – apparently 11,000,000 of us can’t) and then enter in your new, easily remembered pin number.

Simple things like this increase the security of your credit and debit cards and shouldn’t cause you too many headaches when typing in the correct pin numbers at the supermarket checkouts.

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