Nationwide BS - card readers for internet banking

May 10, 2008 28 Replies

All the major banks and building societies in the UK are introducing the same system as Nationwide for their personal customers.

The only exceptions I know about are:

a) HSBC/First Direct - who have ruled this system out as they don't believe it is secure and want something they can roll out globally b) Abbey - who haven't quite made up their minds yet whether to roll it out yet ot not. c) Lloyds - who are rolling out a SecureID type dongle instead.

Regards Sunil

HSBC issue these security devices for some business accounts in the UK

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However, they have ruled out introducing them (and/or card readers) for personal customers in the UK.

Instead, they prefer to work on 'back end' systems to identify fraud - whatever they do it seems to work.. I believe they have the lowest levels of online fraud for any of the big UK banks..

Regards Sunil

I know why they refused me the card. I just don't agree with their reasons. [We have several accounts with NW, all but two are joint. Those accounts are in my wife's name (so we didn't pay tax on the interest). The Internet banking is therefore in her name so that we can "see" all the accounts. We don't want two separate IB registrations and my wife is happy for me to have access to her account but the NW won't do it.]

You are wrong, they don't. I've made transfers between my own accounts and payments long established payees without the need of PINSentry; in fact I don't even have one.

Really? Bums. The last I heard from Halifax, and it was a while ago, they were monitoring the idea but had no plans to introduce it. A good thing as far as I was concerned - I often set up new payments away from home, and I'm certainly not going to carry a calculator-sized device around with me on the off-chance. I don't know if this is a generational thing or what, but it's quite common for my friends and I to use an online transfer to pay for eg a share of a meal, or a loan of some folding cash when there's no cash machine nearby, or similar ad-hoc transactions when one's wallet turns out to be empty. Needing a magic box scuppers all that.

Pete

Nationwide do, although you can still make the payments using the old card in an ATM.

Intelligent Finance don't do this. Instead they text you a reference number which you have to type into the website to complete the transaction.

The cardreader is probably the "safest" of these, as it is useless to someone else unless they know your pin. Not completely useless though, as they could use their own card, and their own pin on it to operate their own bank account.

Agreed. And as they become more common and you acquire several you can leave them in places where they're useful to you (and possibly others).

Tim.

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