Japan facing credit card number shortage

Re:Japan facing credit card number shortage by dqv on Tuesday August 25, 2020 @06:17PM (#24276882)

They would need to EOL over-the-phone payments to do this. People have horrible diction and it's hard to tell the difference between b, c, d, and e when a particularly lazy lipped person says these letters (in addition to non-hex letters like g, p, t, and v). Then they use their own ambiguous phonetic system (b as in ball, c as in call, d as in doll will confuse anyone trying to distinguish between the three). Oh and this compounds on ambiguous sounding digits like 13 and 30; 14 and 40; 15, 16, 50 and 60; 17 and 70; 18 and 80; 19 and 90). It can't be done with DTMF digits anymore either.

All in all not a bad direction to go in. I wouldn't really miss phone payments.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Japan facing credit card number shortage by labster on Tuesday August 25, 2020 @06:34PM (#24277052)

Why don’t we teach schoolchildren the NATO phonetic alphabet? Seems like it wouldn’t take that long, and it would be a useful skill for their whole life.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Japan facing credit card number shortage by xlii on Wednesday August 26, 2020 @07:05AM (#24281293)

In English speaking countries, sure - why not.

But it'd take at least 3 generation to use in non-english speaking country since in different languages same letters might be pronounced vastly different. Then you have immigrants and foreigners who might now know this alphabet so clerks would still be able to recognize ad-hoc and NATO alphabet. In the end, it would extend requirements while not providing universal benefit.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Japan facing credit card number shortage by emiliobumachar on Wednesday August 26, 2020 @12:55PM (#24284366)

Brazilian here. There is an equivalent alphabet in Portuguese, with different words for each letter, better adapted to the Portuguese language. It's ubiquitous in the Brazilian armed services.

Phone service is always in a specific language, I don't see why the use of such alphabets would be harder in non-English-speaking countries than in English-speaking ones.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Japan facing credit card number shortage by xlii on Thursday August 27, 2020 @01:45AM (#24290496)

Not every country even uses Latin alphabet. That’s for one. And you wrote “such alphabets” whereas OP specifically named NATO one. If each country would have their own implementation it would be even more effort consuming and wouldn’t solve anything beyond what we already have.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Japan facing credit card number shortage by emiliobumachar on Thursday August 27, 2020 @06:32AM (#24292159)

"each country would have their own implementation" would not mean anyone has to serve all countries. Services only available in English today would only need to learn the NATO alphabet to remain fully available in English.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Japan facing credit card number shortage by dqv on Tuesday August 25, 2020 @06:52PM (#24277206)

We should. There are so many adults who think it's cute to make up their own phonetics not realizing the whole purpose is to reduce ambiguity, not make it fun to spell things aloud.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Japan facing credit card number shortage by jessriedel on Tuesday August 25, 2020 @08:02PM (#24277685)

As an adult who tries to remember the NATO phonetic alphabet but can't because I only use it once per month, I don't make up words "for fun" or "to be cute". I do it because I can't remember the NATO word. Compared to just saying the letters, the words I choose certainly do reduce ambiguity, even if using the NATO alphabet would go even further.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Japan facing credit card number shortage by PowerBar on Wednesday August 26, 2020 @02:09AM (#24279646)

Some good advice I got from a HAM was to read license plates in your head using the NATO alphabet. Their letters are mostly random so you tend to see each letter at roughly the same frequency and it can be done daily without taking away time from your schedule. Being random also prevents you from just remembering the order of the words and actually associating them with their respective letters.

After doing that for a week or two (I was bike commuting at the time), I had it pretty much memorized.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Japan facing credit card number shortage by dqv on Tuesday August 25, 2020 @08:37PM (#24277874)

This is mostly fine if only done for ambiguous letters and if the understanding is that it is done to reduce ambiguity. There is a contingent of people who painstakingly spell out every letter with a phonetic from their own system and it requires the listener to do a lot more decoding to the point of actually increasing ambiguity. "My name is Michelle that's M/N as in Nail/Mail! I as in Icecream! ..." Nichelle is confused about why we use words to spell out certain letters.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Japan facing credit card number shortage by Trav5 on Tuesday August 25, 2020 @11:51PM (#24278928)

Same, but once every 2 years. Just email me for goodness sake!

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Japan facing credit card number shortage by Narishma on Wednesday August 26, 2020 @05:52AM (#24280896)

Then you'll have to spell your email address using NATO phonetic alphabet.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Japan facing credit card number shortage by jerzyt on Wednesday August 26, 2020 @01:37AM (#24279471)

Dennis Praeger likes to spell his name as: P as pneumatic...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Japan facing credit card number shortage by anonymfus on Tuesday August 25, 2020 @08:20PM (#24277795)

DTMF is actually 16 digits: 1 2 3 A 4 5 6 B 7 8 9 C * 0 # D. While most keypads don't have A B C D buttons, * and # are pretty much everywhere, and easy to distinguish, so adopting base-12 would be relatively easy.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Japan facing credit card number shortage by dqv on Tuesday August 25, 2020 @08:55PM (#24277957)

Shhhhhh no more credit cards by phone :)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Japan facing credit card number shortage by GoblinSlayer on Wednesday August 26, 2020 @05:29AM (#24280725)

Many systems here have over-the-phone robots that understand button presses, but yeah, I think they support only decimal digits.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Japan facing credit card number shortage by dkersten on Wednesday August 26, 2020 @12:59AM (#24279268)

I would be in favour of EOL that insecure mess known as phone payments.

[ Parent | on HN ]