A personal identification number is a secret numeric password shared between a user and a system that can be used to authenticate the user to the system. PINs are most often used for ATMs but are increasingly used at the Point of sale, for debit cards and credit cards. Apart from financial uses, GSM mobile phones usually allow the user to enter PIN between 4 and 8 digits length. The PIN is recorded in the SIM card.
A
personal identification number (PIN, pronounced "pin"; often
redundantly PIN number) is a numeric password
shared between a user and a system, that can be used to authenticate the user
to the system. Typically, the user is required to provide a non-confidential
user identifier or token (the user ID) and a confidential PIN to gain
access to the system. Upon receiving the user ID and PIN, the system looks up
the PIN based upon the user ID and compares the looked-up PIN with the received
PIN. The user is granted access only when the number entered matches with the
number stored in the system. Hence, despite the name, a PIN does not personally
identify the user.[1]
PINs
are used with banking systems (where the identifying token is a card), but are
also used in other, non-financial systems. The PIN is not printed or embedded
on the card but is manually entered by the cardholder during automated teller machine
(ATM) and point of
sale (POS) transactions (such as those that comply with EMV), and in card not present
transactions, such as over the Internet or for phone banking.