Chip and PIN

Today the card industry starts its massive launch of moving people from plastic cards with magnetic stripes and signatures to plastic cards with chip and PIN numbers in an attempt to reduce fraud. ( It's almost 15 years since I was involved in the very early discussions about this matter and at that time the cost of implementation was too high).

Earlier in the year, I spoke to the Communications Director of the Programme Management organisation coordinating this massive task on behalf of the financial services industry, to make sure the needs of older people had been taken into account. I was pleased to discover that during the pilot scheme feedback from older people related to "don't patronise us" and "don't assume we're stupid", which I think are some of the stereotypical comments we are still likely to make about older people and technology.There were groups of people who were concerned about PIN security and safety issues but these spanned all ages.

I'm pretty sure that there will masses of people who forget their PIN at the point of sale just due to the stress of shopping and queuing, regardless of age ( I just hope they don't introduce it round my way at Christmas!)