Did you ever realize how paranoid banks are when sending out money? And also on the other hand, we as customers too are lousy enough not to care about how the banks treat us.
Take the example of a cheque vs. a pay-in slip. Banks use extensive methods to make sure that when money goes out of the bank, it goes to whom it’s meant for. But when the cash comes in, it really doesn’t matter to them who’s depositing the cash and into whose account.
The instruments banks use are pretty much evidence to that effect. A typical cheque from any bank is printed on thick paper, which is printed using special ink, and also contains watermarks to ensure that the cheque is genuine. Then we have the MICR letters, or the letters that you find towards the bottom of the cheque. These weird looking numbers with dots and dashes are called the MICR fonts, which are printed using magnetic ink, and are directly machine read, and not human read to prevent error. And the entire printing is done by a 4 color Heidelberg Printing Machine applying a 2-ton weight on each paper to ensure that the paper completely absorbs all the ink and there’s no washout.
And above and beyond that, all the cheques are properly arranged, are gum and thread bound, are perfectly perforated so that they don’t tear improperly, have enough space to write the ‘amount’ and have the account number and the account holder’s name printed.
Now take another instrument, which sits towards the other side of the spectrum; the pay-in slip. This lousy little piece of paper is printed on a paper that’s probably recycled for the nth time, which has pathetic printing, which has virtually no perforation to tear away the slip, which has no thread or gum binding, and have very little space to type in the amount that you want to deposit.
You run a complete financial check on the person who writes the cheque. Why doesn’t a bank ever verify whether the right person is depositing the money or not? Yeah I know it’s a cranky thought (who would ever deposit their hard earned money in your account just like that?!). But think of it like this: I’m a businessman who doesn’t want to give a contract to company X. Now a guy from that company, who’s hell bent on taking revenge, goes to my bank, deposits Rs.100000 and then sues me on grounds of bribery! I’m finished!
Over and above that, in a cheque, you need to write the amount in words and numbers only once, while in a pay-in slip you need to do that twice, plus also specify the combinations of the denominations used at the back of the pay-in slip!
Why do I need to go through all that torture? Why have MICR letters and nicely printed paper for yourselves and a lousy ‘tissue-paper’ish paper with no space to write anything for me?!
A cheque is a symbol of how a bank treats itself, and a pay-in slip is a symbol of how a bank treats its customer.
If you want a cheque cleared today, you need to give it to the bank before 11 a.m. But the bank will most certainly take 1 day to deposit your amount into the bank, regardless of whether you give it in the morning or evening.
If I lose a debit/credit card, I really have no way to tell the bank that I lost my debit/credit card, except to call up my friends or relative to either give me the phone number to the bank’s hotline or ask them to do the needful. But if I ever call them up to ask about a few services, they’ll run a full check to make sure that it’s me!
While withdrawing money from an ATM I need to enter a pin number and there’s also a miniature camera on the front if you’ve noticed for security sake. But if I use a debit/credit card at a Visa POS, nobody ever verifies the signature, nobody ever asks whether I’m Bhushir Mankad or some Mr.Chagan Ghelphadiya.
Where’s the security? Where’s the assurance? There’s no consistency in any of the instruments used; be it cheques, pay-in slips, debit cards, credit cards, anything.
This is what happens when the Citi never sleeps – this was what my professor said to the whole debacle. (For the ones who didn’t get the joke… forget it…)
(inspired from the Service Marketing class which I took as an extra credit course, but wasn't granted one eventually!)
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