Very likely its just some sort of limit imposed by a security API or library call. Definitely not a way to save space. Its really idiotic - they should be exten

Very likely its just some sort of limit imposed by a security API or library call. Definitely not a way to save space. Its really idiotic - they should be extending it out to longer than that, but there are still some banks around that impose shorter limits than this (8 chars) so they are in good company.