Bangalore: Till date you didn’t have to enter your PIN whenever you swiped your card at the local merchandise. But the picture is not going to remain the same, as RBI has made it compulsory to use the existing ATM PIN on the debit cards for making a purchase, reports Preeti Kulkarni of ET Bureau.

In fact many banks have even sent an SMS alert last week which stated that, all the customers will have to punch their personal identification number or PIN whenever you use your card at a retail outlet or a restaurant terminal in India.

"This is a logical extension of the measures the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has been taking over the last few years to make the payments infrastructure more secure. The second layer of authentication will help debit cardholders carry out their transactions in a secure manner and will certainly reduce frauds as the password is known only to the customer," says Parag Rao, senior executive vice-president and business head-card payment products and merchant acquiring services, HDFC Bank.

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