One of the reasons I haven't been too excited by the latest gadgets to 'assist' the customers at our dinosaur banks is because quite frankly - the whole idea is just ridiculous and obsolete. From where I'm looking anyway.

While most of you probably can't imagine a world without PINS, passwords, user-names, pockets full of gadgets and routines to remember - I just can't imagine a world with them for much longer.

The humble user-name and password was really dead long ago, I accept that most of you realise that, in a practical-for-purpose sense. That doesn't stop you perpetuating them of course. Strange behaviour. Anyone actually fond of them?

PINS present all sorts of challenges to users, support, legal obligations to retain endless bits of every already bloated transaction, and no challenge to thieves.

OK gadget lovers, there is at least one dongle in your pocket you'll tire of like all the others, right after you're inconvenienced when it forgets to leap into your pocket when you leave home. It's just a bit of old-fashioned fun but not the future of convenience.

Anyone like remembering PINS? Anyone actually use a different one for more than one thing? Passwords ditto? Of course you do. It's the one lie that you probably won't get caught out on, not by anyone who would tell on you anyway.

I am under the impression that most people don't really like them. I may be wrong but I think I'll follow a course to a world where that sort of thing is just a humorous embarrassing memory of the past. They aren't part of the future.

The future will be here before you expect it.

Update:

It certainly is when it comes to ATM rippoffs - Chris Skinner pointed this out. It is yet another in big list of problems facing the financial services industry.

Cracking ATM's the Malware Way - New Scientist

Of course they'll fix it, but not the underlying issues, and we'll all be not quite amused to see what comes next. Will they beat half a billion euro in 2009?

Some of us probably know the answer to that one already. It's a wonderful system where a half a billion here or there can slip between the cracks. It's as I said in my blog, just a drop in the ocean compared to Wall St.

The government should wonder at how they can reduce banking fees by half a billion euro or are we left to accept it as some sort of involuntary social welfare program for yet more lazy criminals?