I Seriously Do Not Believe It!

I have two credit cards from the same bank.

One is in my name - Account 1. And one I am a secondary card holder and my partner is the primary account holder, i.e. the account in his name - Account 2.

Due to some changes to an Air Miles scheme I needed new credit cards.

_{image source}

I was sent a new card for my own account and a new pin for it - Account 1.

However, when I opened the randomly assigned pin it was identical to the one I use for Account 2 so I thought I must be confusing the accounts.

I wanted to change the pin on the new card to match to pin on the old card - both Account 1 - and rather than get it confused with Account 2 I decided to go to the bank and make sure I hadn't mixed up my cards.

Whilst there I checked both the old cards and pins in the card reader.

I was correct. The new pin for Account 1 was exactly the same as the one I'd chosen and had been using for some time, for Account 2.

The bank assures me that the two accounts are not linked and the new randomly assigned pin for Account 1, which happens to match the old pin I'd chosen myself for Account 2, was a complete coincidence.

Really? That's gob-smacking!

Although, when I did the maths, I was surprised to discover that the chances of that happening are actually not as low as I thought it would be.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but since it is a 4 digit pin, that makes the odds of getting that particular combination 10,000 to 1.

Which is a little worrying when you consider that 164 million payment cards have been issued in the UK alone. That makes the odds of using the same pin as many other people, pretty high.

Although just how high, is a bit beyond my maths skills. Too many zeros for me.

Over to you lot for that particular calculation. 😂

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~