Banks should be in the bleeding edge of technology. But in the Philippines, they might not be as advanced as we’d like them to be.

Take for example the experience I had while managing my account with BDO Online Banking. Every so often, their system requires password change.

Their password change page details the valid password that the system can accept. The third item says passwords must contain uppercase, lowercase, number and special characters. But then, special characters such as [!#$%^&';"] are not allowed.

My questions:

  • Why not allow the characters: [!#$%^&';"]?
  • Wouldn’t it have been more helpful if you enumerated the set of special characters I can choose from to use in my password instead?
  • I use a password manager. After copying my password from my password manager, why don’t you allow pasting into these fields from my clipboard?

My concerns may seem so trivial, but trivial things like these make or break a great online banking experience.