What are the card readers for?

Security

The idea is that you'll always have the card reader with you whenever you want to do online banking, or at least most of the time. At the moment whenever you want to add a new payee or create a standing order online (at most participating banks) you need to have it to hand so that you can put your card in, enter your pin and type in the authorisation number it gives you as a result on the website. The bank systems can predict this number and hence this 'two factor' authentication makes your transaction more secure.

The roll out

All banks across the UK are expected to roll out the card reader system for all online banking users, if you're reading this from a financial institution and know this not to be true please let us know by using the email address at the bottom of the page and we'll gladly hail you as visionaries!

What's the issue?

Brilliant, you might say. The security aspect is certainly a valid and persuasive argument but it's the size of a calculator! Many of the professionals reading this will know that they can access many office systems using a keyring sized random number generator (often produced by RSA) - why can't we have this instead?? It's certainly much more portable! At the very least we're not saying it's a bad idea but that we should be allowed to opt in - for those of us who travel a lot, on business or otherwise - it's an enormous encumberance.

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