when choosing a pin it is recommended to choose one that will be difficult to guess but also easy for the account holder to remember short basic pins are advised against such as using 123 or numbers that would be easy to guess in instances of fraud common information such as an account holder s birthday marriage anniversary or social security number it is crucial that account holders be cautious about sharing or disclosing their personal identification number to prevent unwanted access to their bank accounts 
electronic transaction processing and personal identification numbers pins electronic transactions with merchants are slightly more complex than standard atm transactions merchant transactions will involve the merchant the merchant acquiring bank the processing network and the issuing bank therefore the use of a pin number can help make transactions more secure by requiring an additional layer of identification from the buyer pins are commonly required as the final step in a payment giving a merchant the approval to process a card for payment a pin is usually only required by the merchant at the point of sale as opposed to being required for online purchases once approval is given to process a card communication is sent to the merchant acquiring bank which facilitates the settlement of the payment once payment communication is designated to the specified processing network the processing network can then contact the cardholder s issuing bank the issuing bank does additional security checks on the transaction to ensure that it is not fraudulent they also confirm that the funds are available in a cardholder s account to cover the payment the issuing bank takes additional security precautions when receiving transaction communication from a merchant in order to ensure the safety of the transaction once confirmed by the issuing bank communication is sent through the processor to the merchant acquiring bank who notifies the merchant and begins settlement on the transaction some pins may disallow the use of certain features such as duplicated digits sequential digits or re using the same pin from before personal identification numbers pins vs passwordalthough both a pin and a password are critical elements related to security there are some important differences between a pin and password a pin is typically a sequence of digits while a password can be longer and contain a combination of letters numbers and symbols a pin is also usually shorter or usually have a more limited length allowed compared to a password with more characters due to length and characters a password is simply more complex it can usually or require use of both upper case letters lower case letters numbers or symbols it may also require a combination of any of the options above therefore a password is more useful to secure access a device an online account or a network that require stronger security a pin is more suitable for a faster and easier access there are potential technical differences between a pin and a password a pin more often is stored locally on a device which operates with less security on the other hand a password may be stored externally on a secure server a password may also more commonly be encrypted hashed or require multi factor authentication to retrieve therefore a password is simply a more securely protected authorization tool tips for setting a strong personal identification numbers pins though a pin should be easy to remember there are certain pitfalls a user should attempt to avoid avoid using obvious combinations such as 0000 as these are the most common pin numbers and are easy to guess consider using a random combination of numbers that you can remember easily but not someone else it s often advised to not use personal information like your birthdate phone number or social security number as these can also be easily guessed or obtained via personal documents sometimes you may have the option of choosing the own length of your pin if this is the case choose a pin that is longer than four digits a longer pin will make it more difficult for someone to guess or hack although there are ways to leverage technology to brute force guess a pin in addition avoid repeating digits or consecutive numbers for example 1212 or 1234 should be avoided if it s an option mix numbers and letters to make it even more secure however make sure that you can easily remember the combination last consider changing your pin regularly if someone is able to guess your pin you may not know that they have been accessing your account by changing your pin regularly you may be incidentally stopping unknown unknown unauthorized access 