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About three decade ago there were people who predicted the end of a society with cash. This was due to the appearance of electronic money as a new way of payment. However, people were somewhat reluctant regarding the use of e-money and leaving out the currency and checks.

As time goes by more people change their minds and vote for electronic means of payment, though currency and check are still highly used in society. Today currency is mainly used for making small purchases. According to statistics, checks are used for 10% of transactions performed each year. As for the transactions performed electronically, these are continuously increasing with a dramatic speed. All in all electronic payments represent 90% of the dollar value of transactions.

The significant growth was possible due to electronic payment networks. These transfer funds in and out of accounts with the help of electronic messages. There's a great variety of e-payment systems, starting with ATMs and to the Internet bill payments.

ATM and Debit Systems

The automated teller machine represents the most popular way of making payments and transferring money. Consumers can access their personal account, deposit money, receive cash, as well as move funds between accounts.

In order to enter the account consumers must get an ATM card from the bank. In addition, for receiving cash, consumers may consider using other cards, including credit cards and some stored value cards. When the consumer inserted the card into the ATM and introduced the PIN code the transaction can be performed.

PIN Guessing

Here are some basic rules of how to effectively use your PIN code:

You should keep the four digits of your Personal Identification Number secret.

The four digits should be easy to remember. It is important to note that using your birth dates, Social Security numbers, addresses, or phone numbers as a PIN code is not a good idea, because they can easily be guessed.

It is important to remember your PIN code and never leave it written on the ATM card or anything near it.

The PIN should not be stated over the phone and it also should not be included in email orders.

One of the most popular fields of e-payment growth is debit card payment. It considerably increased during the mid 1990s, when a lot of retailers started installing and using debit technology.

At that time credit cards networks asked merchants to recognize signature debit cards in case they accepted credit cards. Although today this procedure is no longer needed, there are still merchants who apply it. In order to process payment card transactions, merchants need to pay fees to their financial institutions. The fees they pay for PIN debit are usually lower than fees they pay for signature debit or credit card payments. This is why there are a lot of merchants who try to persuade their customers to use PIN debit, which is opposite to the practice of financial institutions, who push customers towards using the signature debit.