https://www.financialclock.com/2017/04/05/join-debate-illiterate-bank-customer-issued-atm-card/

The debate on whether an illiterate should be issued ATM card has been on the increase. Especially with the global drive for financial inclusiveness of the unbanked.

What is your take on this? There are two positions to this.

An individual who is an illiterate has the right to be issued ATM card on his or her account on request.
An illiterate account holder should not be issued ATM card as the knowledge to manage the card is lacking.
Before we go further, let’s briefly recap the features and benefits of an ATM card.

An ATM card is a payment card that enables holders to perform financial transaction.
The transactions include; cash withdrawals, account inquiries, funds transfers, bill payments, and facilitate some other electronic banking settlements.
The ATM card allows card present and card not present transactions.
The ATM cards are secured with chip and PIN.
The responsibility of card security lies with the card holder.
The benefits derivable from ATM card usage are indeed enormous. ATM cards make banking easy and convenient. As one will not need to visit the banks to carry out most transactions.

Those in favor of the idea

That it will be sheer discrimination to deny any account holder this product.
That it is the right of an illiterate account holder to make the decision, and not the bank staff.
That the illiterate has the right to appoint any trusted person to assist him or her.


Those against the idea

That an illiterate is a person, having little or no education is unable to read or write.
With the features of ATM cards, how can a person who can neither read nor write use the card? Will it not amount to setting up the customer to easily become an ATM card fraud victim?
An illiterate will most likely require the assistance of a 3rd Thereby, compromising his or her PIN.
That banks, owe their customers the duty to protect their funds. Therefore, the bank staff must advise the customer against obtaining ATM card.
The points for both sides have been drawn out. Let’s know your own stand. Kindly send in your comments through this page.

Absolutely no.
Even the bank staff processing atm card for an illiterate custmer knows he is doing something wrong, but atimes, the pressure from above to issue cards on all uncarded accounts is just unbearable.

But in most cases you find the customer insisting to have the ATM card issued him or her. there are even instances when they come with their educated children or relatives. And you find that person ranting in the bank. i see that as a red flag. It is most likely that such person will be the one that will be using that card once it is issued to the illiterate customer.