My bank has started accepting, even encouraging, the use of an ATM card as a form of identification for check cashing purposes. My bank has installed several credit card swiping machines in front of each teller and the teller now no longer really wants to see your driver’s license when you cash a check. Instead, the teller asks you if you have an ATM to swipe and enter your PIN.
Forget for a moment all of the potential security issues involved with someone hovering over your shoulder at the grocery store and stealing your PIN as you punch it in during your check out because you’re too stupid to choose “Credit” on the check card instead of “Debit” (same difference only one requires no PIN entry), but why all of the sudden do tellers NOT want to see an ID with a picture on it?
Why is this now the preferred and encouraged method of identification at banks? Are the tellers too lazy to look at my ID? I don’t want to believe that. Instead, it’s almost like the bank doesn’t want the teller to look at my ID anymore for some kind of liability reasons. It makes me wonder if somewhere something says the bank is not liable if they give your money to someone with a valid ATM card and PIN, but I could sue the hell out of them if they can’t read a picture ID correctly.
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I work at a hotel in NYC, and we won’t let you check into the hotel without a valid form of picture ID. Guests always hand me their credit card first and are (usually) pleasantly surprised when I request photo identification instead. In the rare occasion a guest has arrived at the hotel without photo ID, it’s a fairly big production to validate this person as the correct person on the reservation.
Fortunately for bank customers, all of your cash is insured by the federal government.
The difference between swiping the card and choosing “debit” or “credit” is the amount of time it takes for the transaction to got through your account.
Credit transactions take days sometimes to show, and are referred to as a “hold”. So I don’t choose credit.
Debit transactions show right away.