Merchant Account - Methods of Processing Credit Cards

Methods of Processing Credit Cards

Today a majority of credit card transactions are sent electronically to merchant processing banks for authorization, capture and deposit. Various methods exist for presenting a credit card sale to "the system." In all circumstances either the entire magnetic strip is read by a swipe through a credit card terminal/reader, a computer chip is read, or the credit card information is manually entered into a credit card terminal, a computer or website. The earliest methods, submitting credit card slips to a merchant processing bank by mail, or by accessing an Automated Response Unit (ARU) by telephone, are still in use today but have long been overshadowed by electronic devices. These early methods used two-part forms and a manual device for mechanically imprinting the embossed card number information onto the forms.

Read more about this topic:  Merchant Account

Famous quotes containing the words credit cards, methods of, methods, credit and/or cards:

    “The world is a puzzling place today. All these banks sending us credit cards, with our names on them. Well, we didn’t order any credit cards! We don’t spend what we don’t have. So we just cut them in half and throw them out, just as soon as we open them in the mail. Imagine a bank sending credit cards to two ladies over a hundred years old! What are those folks thinking?”
    —Sarah Louise Delany (b. 1889)

    “If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself.... If you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience.”
    —Mao Zedong (1893–1976)

    “Cold and hunger seem more friendly to my nature than those methods which men have adopted and advise to ward them off.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “Especially with our first child, we tend to take too much responsibility—both credit and blame—for everything. The more we want to be good parents, the more we tend to see ourselves as making or breaking our children.”
    —Polly Berrien Berends (20th century)

    “Out in Hollywood, where the streets are paved with Goldwyn, the word “sophisticate” means, very simply, “obscene.” A sophisticated story is a dirty story. Some of that meaning was wafted eastward and got itself mixed up into the present definition. So that a “sophisticate” means: one who dwells in a tower made of a DuPont substitute for ivory and holds a glass of flat champagne in one hand and an album of dirty post cards in the other.”
    —Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)