In a move that will make you rejoice (and probably make your parents shake their heads in despair), one UK online banking provider, Intelligent Environments, has announced it’s currently in discussion with banks regarding the concept of emoji passcodes.
So, instead of remembering a 4-digit number you could instead be cheerily entering something like this:
While some people might dub it a gimmick, there’s actually a lot of sense behind Intelligent Environments’ push towards pictorial passcodes. The company states that a third of Brits have forgotten their PIN before so, as research has proven we remember images better than text, it makes sense to give this a whirl.
Futhermore, using emojis makes things more secure, with Intelligent Environments pointing out that, with a 4-digit standard-format PIN number, there are “7,290 unique permutations of four non-repeating numbers.” With an emoji Passcode, there are “3,498,308 million unique permutations of non-repeating emojis.” Basically, there’s less chance of someone hacking into your bank account.
While Intelligent Environments are giving nothing away regarding which banks they’re planning to work with, they hope to introduce this new technology within the next year. Watch this space!
Images via Grace Howard
