Credit Card Number Input - Web Design

We shop on the internet very often (though there are some who fear online shopping yet). Atleast I do shop often.

And everytime I shop (or even pay bills online) I get irritated with the web design for accepting the credit card expiration date details. All of my credit cards state the expiration year using numbers only. E.g.: 05/02 standing for the fifth month in 2002. But almost everywhere (online shops, online bill payment web sites) I am asked to enter the name of the month when my card is due to expire.

This is reason for irritation to me, since I now have to covert the number to the month name and I am not too fast at that!! I wonder if this irritates other net users too or is it that I am growing old and lazy ?

WHY, WHY do online web forms need to know the name of the month when credit cards display the month's number?

I can't understand the rational for this design!

I was happy to note that meritime.com, an online shop, provided the shopper with a drop down list which stated the name of the month and also the number, e.g.: Feb (2), Mar(3).

Simple and nice design !

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