Bank Cards
Bank cards are payment cards issued by banks to their customers, allowing them to access funds in their bank accounts to make purchases or withdraw cash. These cards can be debit cards, which deduct funds directly from the user's account, or credit cards, which allow the user to borrow funds up to a certain limit. Bank cards are a key tool in facilitating electronic and cashless transactions in the modern economy.
5 Key excerpts on "Bank Cards"
eBook - ePubThe Book of Payments
Historical and Contemporary Views on the Cashless Society
- Bernardo Batiz-Lazo, Leonidas Efthymiou, Bernardo Batiz-Lazo, Leonidas Efthymiou(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
...He opened with this rather simple but startling observation: In the context of customer use, “credit card” has always been a misnomer. Certainly from the user viewpoint, a bank card is solely used to create debits. That is, to dispose of value owned by or to be earned by the user. The term “credit card” is a derivative in that deferring the date of credits beyond the date of debits was originally referred to as “extending credits;” thus, the birth of “credit cards,” a classic example of naming and marketing the product from the perspective of the supplier rather than the user, thus making it unacceptable to a large number of prospective customers. 6 Hock was concerned that the language used to talk about his core business was restricting the way bankers thought about what it was and what it could become. He was also troubled by the way banks treated credit lines and deposit accounts as two separate things. In his mind, there was no natural distinction: Bank card accounts, savings accounts and checking accounts have only two substantive differences: First, the time at which the bank requires the customer to make credits—deposits or payments—to balance the ledger, and second, the party to receive interest and at what rate depending on the balance struck. 7 Both were simply “accounts” and those accounts could fluctuate between holding funds loaned by the customer to the bank, or funds loaned by the bank to the customer. Furthermore, the mechanisms consumers use to access those accounts are also essentially the same: Checks, like Bank Cards, are simply mechanical devices for exchanging value by debiting accounts. It is only by custom that credits are required in advance, that third-party acceptance carries no assurance of payment and that MICR encoding on paper governs the mechanics of clearings...
eBook - ePub- Tim Walker, Lucian Morris(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
...typically monthly) over an indefinite period (unlike a loan, which normally must be paid off within a fixed term). 6.1.4 Charge Cards Charge cards (e.g. the original American Express and Diners Club cards) work similarly to credit cards, but the account holder has to pay off the whole balance by the statement payment date. They often have higher credit limits than credit cards (and some were advertised as having no credit limit) and were historically associated with corporate expenses such as travel and entertainment. They are also occasionally called delayed debit cards. 1 6.1.5 Other Payment Cards Of note are public transport payment cards, with perhaps Hong Kong's Octopus as one that is the most well-known for extending its acceptance from transport to many retailers for small payments. Such cards are usually contactless smartcards (see Section 2.5.13) with a stored value application that means they can be used without needing an authorisation from whatever accounting platform maintains the associated accounts. This ensures a very fast response at turnstiles when entering or exiting a station, tram or bus. Fuel cards, used for purchases of fuel and related goods at filling stations, are another category of payment card with a distinct function. Additional information is collected by the merchant and passed to the issuer such as vehicle registration and mileage, volume of fuel purchased, and tax included in the payment amount. This can make it easier for companies, the main users of such cards, to control and account for fuel and related expenses. Store cards are similar to credit cards in that the cardholder can make purchases up to the credit limit of their account and then has to pay off at least a minimum amount after each statement. They differ from credit cards in that a store card is only useable in the stores of the retailer that issued it...
eBook - ePubPayments and Banking in Australia: From coins to cryptocurrency
how it started, how it works, and how it may be disrupted
- Nikesh Lalchandani(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Innovations Accelerated(Publisher)
...8. CARDS CARD S, ATM S AND EFTPOS remain as part of the core of consumer payments today. The history of cards goes back to times before computerisation, yet today, they have evolved to be at the forefront of electronic payments on the Internet and through mobile devices. In this section, we shall look at all things to do with cards. Like a complex river system with a number of tributaries, cards have many facets: in shopping, at ATMs, in person and online. It is impractical to cover the topics in a purely chronological way so, while the sequence is broadly time-based, in completing the story for each topic it may be necessary to jump ahead slightly and return again, just as we would if we were to survey the tributaries of a complex river system. Store Credit and the Credit Card Store credit is perhaps as old as stores themselves. Originally, credit was recorded on a small ledger card held by the store. There has often been talk in recent times of a seamless payment experience: a utopian situation where we walk in, and walk out with our goods, and payment happens in the background. This existed long ago. Driving up to a fuel station, telling the attendant to, “Fill ‘er up, thanks, mate. Put it on the account,” without getting out of the driver’s seat is a lost experience in this modern anonymous transactional world. Corner stores, butchers and grocery stores would keep accounts for local residents. In Australia, this would have started with the British settlement in 1788, all the way to, ironically, the arrival of the credit card in the mid-1970s. The invention of the credit card was initially an elegant and simple idea that meant, for decades to come, we could avoid the problem of real-time integration with the banking ledger...
- Jeff Slawsky, Samee Zafar(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Visa and MasterCard require their merchants to accept all cards that carry their respective brands. A merchant cannot accept Visa debit cards but not Visa credit cards. Partial acceptance would cause confusion in the minds of the customers and dilute the brand’s overall value. The four parties involved in a transaction are: • Cardholder – the customer of a financial institution (the card issuer) who has been issued a bankcard by that institution to withdraw cash and make purchases; • Merchant – the seller of goods and services and a client of a financial institution (the merchant acquirer) who guarantees payment for authorized payment card transactions at the time of the transaction. Money is paid to the merchant shortly thereafter; • Card issuer (or issuer) – the financial institution which issues the bankcard to the cardholder; • Merchant acquirer (or acquirer) – the financial institution which makes the payment to the merchant for bankcard transactions. Subject to how a particular payment market is organized, there is also a fifth party involved in a bankcard transaction: the bankcard scheme such as Visa or MasterCard facilitating the transaction directly or indirectly. The card issuer has a direct relationship with the cardholder: debit cardholders are almost always retail banking customers whereas credit and charge customers may not have any deposit accounts with the issuer; indeed the issuer may not be a bank but a specialist credit card issuing business such as MBNA or Capital One. The merchant acquirer is a financial institution with a business relationship with the merchant. It markets to and signs up merchants to accept bankcards. It undertakes to guarantee payment against all approved bankcard transactions. Figure 2.1 shows the process flow for a purchase transaction...
eBook - ePubContemporary Economics
An Applications Approach
- Robert Carbaugh(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Eventually, you must pay off your bill by writing a check to the financial institution that issued the card. Yet, without an adequate amount of funds in your checking account, MasterCard would soon discover that the credit receipt that it received with your signature on it is virtually worthless. Put simply, if you use your MasterCard to make a purchase, you obtain a short-term loan from the financial institution that issued the card. Credit cards are thus a method of postponing payment for a brief period. Often, credit cards are more convenient than writing checks or making payments in cash. People who have credit cards can pay many of their bills all at once at the end of the month, instead of sporadically as they make purchases. Therefore, people who have credit cards tend to hold less cash on average than people who do not have credit cards. Thus, the increased usage of credit cards may decrease the amount of money that people desire to hold. Shopping For A Cre dit Card: Why Are Rates So High? This year, you may receive a few invitations to get a new credit card. Card companies mail billions of unsolicited credit offers to U.S. households during a year and make tens of millions of telephone calls to sell their cards. Today, some large issuers, such as First USA Bank, which has 12 million cards in circulation, are banks in name only. Credit cards are their primary business. The business can be highly profitable as long as cardholders stay in debt. Today, the typical U.S. adult has a credit card account with a balance of more than $1,800. Credit associations, such as Visa and MasterCard, sign up banks that offer cards to consumers; firms such as Discover and American Express offer cards directly to consumers. How does the amount on your charge slip end up on your monthly statement, and how does it get paid along the way? Suppose that you go to Walmart and purchase a CD player with your Visa card...
