To use a credit card, you normally hand the credit card to the cashier, she swipes it on her machine, and transaction documents are printed out. These transaction slips are then handed to you for you to sign. The cashier checks your signature and compares it to the specimen signature at the back of your card, and if it matches (a few distortions are acceptable, after all, no one can sign their name exactly the same way twice), you’re good to go.

Although this method is fairly secure, it does not safeguard your card from being used by others. Even if your signature is almost unintelligible, an enterprising con-artist, with enough patience and practice, can still forge your signature.

To prevent this, some credit card companies have integrated a chip and pin security (CPS) feature in their cards they issue. This CPS feature allows users to simply plug in a pin number on a machine at the check out counter and the purchase transaction is then verified and authorized.

The beauty of this feature is that even if your credit card gets lost or stolen, you can be assured that no one can make unauthorized purchases on it nor make ATM withdrawals using it, unless of course, it was stolen by someone who is privy to your pin number.

If you really want to safeguard your credit card, make sure that you keep it in a secure place. Do not show it around unnecessarily, do not entrust your card to anyone and most importantly, keep the pin number to yourself. Incidentally, when choosing a pin number, select numbers you can easily remember but do not use sequential or similar digits (1234, 3333), your birth date or numerals from your phone number, address or zip code.

Back to Credit Card Articles