December 9th, 2013 by Elma Jane
Credit Cards accepted on the American Express network will be offered by U.S. Bank. in the fall of 2014.
U.S. Bank becomes another major bank to form a partnership with American Express. As previously reported in August, Wells Fargo began issuing new credit cards accepted on the American Express network on a limited basis this year, with a full scale launch planned for the first half of 2014.
Pam Joseph, Vice Chairman of U.S. Bank, said in a statement, We believe that the American Express network provides a combination of benefits and services that many of our customers want.
The cards will be available to bank customers in the 3,088 branches of U.S. Bank, as well as online and by phone. U.S. Bank customers will also have a choice of obtaining a Visa or MasterCard.
Posted in Credit card Processing, Electronic Payments, Financial Services, Visa MasterCard American Express Tagged with: accepted, American Express, credit cards, MasterCard, network, online, U.S. Bank, visa, Wells Fargo
December 2nd, 2013 by Elma Jane
Europay, Mastercard, and Visa (EMV) standards. Considered safer and widely used across Europe and other nations, the chip-based cards require insertion of the card into a terminal for the duration of a transaction, a break here from our traditional swipe-and-buy behavior. That’s just one way in which EMV changes things here… but it’s not the only way, nor is it the most important way. By way of reminder, October 2015 is the date by which all restaurants and other merchants are due to have implemented these standards, or potentially be liable for counterfeit fraud, which primarily reflects a shift from magnetic-stripe credit cards to chip cards.
The main driver in the EMV migration is card-related financial fraud. As an example, and traditionally, card fraud in the United Kingdom has always been considerably higher than here in the States, primarily because the U.K. previously used offline card authorization as opposed to the online card methodology used here. As losses due to fraud rose steadily in Europe, despite the best efforts of global law enforcement agencies to reduce it, the pressure to find a solution built around some alternative authentication strategy mounted. From this concern, EMV was born.
Is it working? Recent statistics from the European Central Bank (ECB) revealed that, despite growing card usage, fraud in the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) – a mature EMV territory that includes all 28 members of the European Union, Finland, Iceland , Liechenstein, Monaco and Norway, – fell 7.6% between 2007 and 2011. This decline is underpinned by a slowdown in the growth of ATM fraud as well as a 24% drop in fraud carried out at point of sale terminals. The 2008 Canadian roll-out of Chip and PIN had a dramatic impact on fraud there. Card Skimming had accounted for losses totaling $142 million, but that figure dropped to $38.5 million in 2009, according to figures provided by the Interac Association. Some critics point to the fact that most of this decrease comes in the form of face-to-face card fraud, and that criminals merely shift their focus onto some other area that is less anti-fraud focused. Still, there are positive gains and as technologies improve, more successes are sure to follow.
Part of the reason why the U.S. not embraced EMV sooner is because our fraud problem, while significant, has typically been among the lowest rates in the world among highly developed economically mature countries. Much of that is due to the online authentication methods at work here. Here at home, our online authentication methodology permits authorizations to be done in real-time, thus thwarting a significant percentage of the fraudulent attempts at the point-of-sale, the best place to stop fraud. Our online authentication methods also incorporate multiple fraud and risk parameters as well as advanced neural networks that are ‘built-in’ to the approval process. It’s been a highly effective system that works well, when compared to most alternatives. The effectiveness of our authentication processes has helped fuel the resistance to full EMV adoption here. However, the EMV migration has gained momentum to the point where it is only a matter of time. The truth is that, despite the gains in preventing credit card fraud, and despite the best efforts of EMV’s backers to push acceptance through, global adoption of the EMV standard is still considerably less than 100%.
In England’s old offline authentication method, credit card transactions were gathered together at specific times- typically, at the end of the business day- and then batched over to the card issuers for authorization. It’s a method that gave those committing fraud a significant time lag between the transaction and the authorization, and this time lag contributed greatly to the higher levels of fraudulent activities in England. However, for Europe and for much of the rest of the world, adoption of the EMV technologies changes things dramatically, at least in terms of authentication protocols for both online and offline purchases. During an offline transaction using the EMV chip card, the payment terminal communicates with the integrated circuit chip (ICC), embedded in the payment card. This is a break from the old method which involved using telecommunications to connect with the issuing bank. The ICC / terminal connection enables real-time card authentication, cardholder verification, and payment authorization offline. Alternatively, in an online EMV transaction, the chip generates a cryptogram that is authenticated by the card issuer in real time.
Posted in Electronic Payments, EMV EuroPay MasterCard Visa, Financial Services, Near Field Communication, Payment Card Industry PCI Security, Visa MasterCard American Express Tagged with: authentication, batched, card, card authorization, card-related, chip cards, chip-based, credit cards, cryptogram, EMV, EuroPay, financial, fraud, fraudulent, icc, insertion, integrated, magnetic stripe, MasterCard, Merchant's, networks, online, payment, restaurants, Skimming, standards, swipe-and-buy, terminal, transaction, verification, visa
November 11th, 2013 by Elma Jane
MasterCard is releasing a new program for its corporate clients that allows them to closely monitor and control their travel expenses online. The program, known as Travel Controller, lets businesses track all of their individual travel accounts under one system, giving owners a chance to reduce those travel expenses.
Typically, travel and entertainment is the second-largest controllable expense after salaries and benefits, and yet companies worldwide are overwhelmed with huge amounts of travel spend data requiring expense reconciliation said, head of travel and entertainment at MasterCard. “With minimal upfront investment and systems integration, Travel Controller gives companies the opportunity to remedy this pain point.
This program is somewhat an extension of the Smart Data service that MasterCard launched in July. This program lets company treasurers analyze business-wide spending by assessing big data from all employees.
MasterCard’s Travel Controller is not scheduled to be on the market until early 2014, but it is currently being used as a pilot at a select group of banks. With this program, business owners can gain a better understanding of how their travel expenses are being spent. If an employee is spending more than the amount dictated by the company’s travel policy, the Travel Controller will show that information.
Posted in Credit card Processing, Travel Agency Agents, Visa MasterCard American Express Tagged with: accounts, benefits, control, corporate, entertainment, expenses, investment, market, MasterCard, online, pilot, reconcilliation, remedy, salaries, systems integration, travel, travel controller, upfront
October 28th, 2013 by Elma Jane
With banks and shops starting to let customers pay by tapping their smart phones on terminals in stores, the future of plastic credit cards is looking shaky.
MasterCard, which has teamed with Coles and CommBank on these ventures, yesterday said Australians were rapidly embracing contactless payments using PayPass and rival Visa’s payWave. At Coles, six out of 10 MasterCard and Visa payments were contactless.
MasterCard head of market development and innovation for Australasia said three out of 10 MasterCard terminal payments were contactless and there were now more than 175,000 terminals nationwide that could accept them. More than 10 million MasterCards in Australia could make contactless payments.
An EMV (Europay, MasterCard and Visa) standard meant all terminals were capable of handling different brands of contactless payments.
The first stage of the contactless payments or “tap and go” revolution began with Visa payWave and MasterCard PayPass in Australia and the first institution to make contactless payments available locally was the Commonwealth Bank in 2006.
The next stage is to use smartphones rather than just plastic cards for contactless payments. Customers still use their Visa and MasterCard accounts, but the transaction is effected using a Near Field Communication sticker placed on the back of the phone, or an embedded, secure NFC element inside modern Android smartphones.
In Europe, NFC-enabled watches, wristbands, key rings and fobs also were being used for contactless payments and there was no reason this couldn’t happen here.
Visa said it had made a “significant investment” in a mobile NFC ecosystem.
“Visa is working closely with partners like Samsung, Vodafone and Optus on a range of mobile payment solutions that use the secure element and prepaid SIM models.”
CommBank, which previously enabled contactless payments from an iPhone housed in a special case, last week said it would let customers pay directly from their Apple phone using an NFC sticker, and from newer Android phones with embedded secure NFC technology.
The new facility, to be rolled out in the current financial year, is part of a revamp of the bank’s smartphones apps.
Coles said contactless payments had increased in the past year by more than 70 per cent while CommBank’s volume of contactless payments had increased six fold in 12 months. Westpac said it was piloting an Android mobile contactless payment application and was also investigating smartwatch payments.
“We also believe that the next big trend after the rise of mobiles and NFC in Australia will be mobile checkouts, where shoppers purchase products and have them delivered within two or three clicks,” a spokeswoman said, and the moves were “as big a market shift as we’ve ever seen”.
Coles also announced a trial of its own contactless payments technology using NFC stickers. Funds would be drawn from Coles Rewards MasterCards. Some 5000 mobile phone tags would be issued in a trial.
ANZ said it was continuing its trial of a mobile wallet for Android phones begun last year, ahead of making the solution available to customers.
“Our NFC pilot with Samsung and Optus is tracking well and we’re also investigating other payment options such as QR codes,” an ANZ spokesman said.
“Given the fragmentation of the market, we will continue to monitor developments before finalising how we will bring a viable mobile wallet solution for our customers to market.”
St George Bank chief information officer said his bank planned to have a contactless phone payments solution in the market “sometime in 2014”.
The bank has previously been reported to be looking at payments via the Pebble and Samsung smart watches.
National Australia Bank, which unveiled its peer-to-peer payments app, NAB Flik, last month, said it was watching how the contactless payments market developed with “less focus on being first to market and more focus on being best in market.”
The Australian reported last month that Apple and PayPal were exploring an alternative to NFC-enabled contactless payments called iBeacons. When you pass close to a store in a shopping centre, a beacon will detect your phone’s presence and automatically alert you to signature items for sale and specials, or offer other information to lure you inside, and process payments.
CommBank last week told The Australian it was looking at iBeacons technology.
Posted in Credit card Processing, Electronic Payments, EMV EuroPay MasterCard Visa, Near Field Communication, Visa MasterCard American Express Tagged with: accounts, Android, banks, checkouts, contactless, embedded, EMV, EuroPay, fobs, Iphone, MasterCard, mobile, mobile wallet, Near Field Communication, nfc, optus, payments, paypass, paywave, phone, plastic credit cards, prepaid, process payments, qr codes, Samsung, secure, shops, sim, smart phones, Smartphones, smartwatch, sticker, store's, Tags, tap and go, tapping, terminal, terminals, transaction, visa's, vodafone
October 24th, 2013 by Elma Jane
Buoyed by an improving economy, business travelers are once again taking to the skies and spending more on corporate travel. The Global Business Travel Association has projected that $273.3 billion in travel dollars will be spent in 2013, and “that’s a whole lot of spending for corporate travel managers and individual business travelers to evaluate and track.”
Recognizing this problem, MasterCard launched Travel Controller on October 21. The new product is designed to give corporate users greater control over their travel expenses by directly addressing data concerns.
“Companies today are more than ever looking for more and better ways to help manage their corporate travel expense, to manage travelers that are outside of policy, and most importantly, reduce the amount of money they spend on travel.
Travel Controller is designed to be a modern solution to the problems posed by traditional lodge cards. Unlike these options, Travel Controller allows corporate users to identify individual travelers, trips and transactions, providing businesses greater insight into this spending than the available offerings that dominate the market.
Travel controller uses latest virtual card technology to generate a unique account number for each individual transaction, each hotel reservation and each ticket that’s purchased. And when its generating that card, it captures that data that’s important to the company for how they manage that.
Whether that’s the details of the transaction or things more specific to the trip or traveler or the way the company manages its budgets, all of this information is provided 100 percent of the time. This removes the headaches associated with central travel while still giving that control element that companies are looking for.
Travel Controller is around the goals of an end user organization, as a company that’s trying to manage their travel expenses more effectively.
There is a defined data set, and built in flexibility for companies to define their own customer-specific fields, that are important so that the data you get back isn’t just thousands of pieces of information, but rather its those things that are most important and its brought to you in a way that makes it easy to take advantage of.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Credit card Processing, Financial Services, Merchant Services Account, Travel Agency Agents, Visa MasterCard American Express Tagged with: account, addressing, amount, association, business, card, controller, corporate, data set, dollars, dominate, element, expenses, generating, global, improving, individual, information, lodge, market, MasterCard, money, policy, reduce, spend, spending, traditional, transactions, travel, travelers, trips, unique, virtual
October 21st, 2013 by Elma Jane
Good time for merchants to start noting how their provider is handling card company fee changes as well as any future rate and fee changes, especially if your contract will expire in 2014.
October 2013 Rate and Fee Increase Notices
Visa, MasterCard, and Discover Credit card companies generally make rate and fee changes in the April and October time frame, although they have also made changes at other times of the year. Inevitably, some banks and merchant account providers seem to take advantage of the card company changes by increasing or adding their own mark-ups and by pointing too much of the blame at the card companies for the increases. This time around isn’t much different than others and merchants have sent me some rate and fee increase notices that go well beyond any card company changes.
In understanding how your provider is handling the latest card company changes, keep in mind that there are two important changes for October 2013:
Discover introduced a .25 cent increase to all transactions.
MasterCard introduced a .25 cent increase to certain transactions.
Below are two examples of recent notices on the October changes. Understanding the above .25 cent changes, how would you rate these providers?
Notice 1: 0.02 Percent + $0.02 Increase
“MasterCard, Visa and Discover typically evaluate the Interchange rates and fees twice per year most often in April and October. Based on recent changes as well as analysis from other network providers and vendors, the following changes to your merchant account are being implemented and will be reflected in your merchant statements for transactions processed beginning in October:
Interchange Plus Merchants: Percentage charged in excess of Interchange will increase by 2/100ths of a percent; and
Transactions Fees for all authorized transactions will increase by $0.02/transaction.”
Tiered Pricing Merchants: Qualified Rate for Visa, MasterCard and Discover will increase 2/100th of a percent;
Notice 2: 0.40 Percent Increase
“Effective October 1, 2013, the discount rates charged for your Visa, MasterCard, and Discover (as applicable) credit card and non-PIN (signature) debit card transactions will increase by 0.400%. We have increased these charges based on a variety of factors, including recent Card Organization changes and our own pricing considerations. This change will appear beginning with your October month-end statement you will receive in November.”
Your Statements Now go back to the statements you received in August and September or any notices you received via mail and read the notice your provider posted for these changes. Did the provider announce the actual change or did it state something quite differently? If it’s the latter, make sure it adjusts pricing accordingly. Also, make sure you monitor your rates, fees, and notices going forward to determine the best long-term course of action. If the provider needs you to extend your contract to correct its overcharges, then there are probably bigger pricing issues and more assertive action required by you to investigate your overall processing cost.
EMV Capable Terminals
To reduce fraud in the U.S., the card companies are introducing cards that have a chip as well as the current magnetic strip. Chip cards are prevalent outside the U.S. and EMV — Europay, MasterCard, and Visa — established the technical standards for processing them.
Brick-and-mortar merchants should understand about EMV.
Brick-and-mortar merchants should have equipment capable of processing EMV chip card transactions by October 2015 as certain fraud liability will shift from the bank that issued the card to the merchant. The equipment may be a terminal or a chip card reader attached to the terminal or POS system.
Certain credit card transactions will require a PIN number instead of a signature similar to PIN debit transactions today. Also, like the current PIN debit devices, each chip reader will need to be encrypted and the encryption code is processor specific. Therefore, if a merchant has an encrypted device, changing processors may be more costly as the encryption cannot simply be downloaded over the phone or Internet as is done with terminal reprogramming now. Instead, the encrypted device will need to go back to the provider for encryption or swapped with an encrypted device or a new encrypted device may be needed.
“EMV capable” can mean very little. In fact, if you have purchased or leased an “EMV capable” terminal it may simply mean that it has the slot or contactless connection to place the chip card and the terminal may have the capability to eventually be encrypted to actually process chip cards. However, the cost and time required to do so could be prohibited.
However, merchants should be planning to have equipment capable of processing chip card by October 2015. In fact, they should be planning to have the equipment capable of processing chip cards well ahead of the October 2015 — perhaps as early as late 2014, to ensure receiving it in time.
If a merchant’s existing terminal fails or is no longer supported, the merchant should inquire about EMV terminals as a replacement. However, ask if it comes fully encrypted and capable of actually processing an EMV transaction or if it will need the encryption later. Right now, the answer is likely that the terminal will need encryption later. If so, the merchant should obtain the time frame, process, and cost for enabling the terminal to actually process chip cards. This should be in writing. Remember, new terminals cost the provider around $150 to $250 and the encryption may be an extra $25 to $50.
Make sure you are comfortable with your provider and have negotiated the best processing cost before changing to encrypted EMV equipment.
Merchants do not need EMV terminals today and very few providers actually have terminals that can process an EMV chip card transaction right now.
Posted in Credit card Processing, Electronic Payments, EMV EuroPay MasterCard Visa, Visa MasterCard American Express Tagged with: authorized, banks, chip card, contactless, cost, credit-card, debit, devices, Discover, EMV, encrypted, fee, increase, interchange, MasterCard, merchant account providers, network, overcharges, percent, percentage, PIN, POS, pricing, processor, prohibited, rate, rate and fee, statements, terminal, transactions, visa
October 10th, 2013 by Elma Jane
There are various payment processing rates that apply to credit and debit card transactions. Visa and MasterCard do not publish their rules and regulations or the payment processing standards required to get the lowest interchange rate. It’s up to credit card processing companies to understand and implement them to their merchants’ benefit. A high downgrade rate may indicate that your processor does not know the standards, or may be reluctant to implement best practices or new rules changes. The application of these rates is based on a variety of factors related to the particular circumstances of the sale and the way the payment is processed, as well as on the type of the card that was used. Typically payments processed in a card-not-present environment (e.g. online or over the phone) are assessed higher processing fees than payments processed in a face-to-face setting. Payments made with regular consumer types of cards are generally processed at lower rates than payments made with rewards, business-to-business or commercial cards. Debit cards are processed at lower interchange rates than credit cards. In order to simplify the pricing for their merchants, the majority of the processing companies have elected to use various tiered pricing models (two-tiered, three-tiered, six-tiered, etc.). There are three general classifications used in the various tiered pricing models:
Qualified Transaction (also referred to as the Swiped Rate) This is the rate charged per each transaction when the card is physically swiped through a credit card terminal. When a transaction is processed in accordance with the rules and standards established in the Payment Processing Agreement, signed by the merchant and the processing bank, and It involves a regular consumer credit card, It is processed at the most favorable rate. This rate is called a “Qualified Rate” and is set in the merchant’s Payment Processing Agreement. The Qualified Rate is set based on the way a merchant will be accepting a majority of their credit cards. For example, for an internet-based merchant, the internet interchange categories will be defined as Qualified, while for a physical retailer only transactions where cards are swiped through a terminal will be Qualified.
Mid-Qualified Transaction This is the rate charged when a transaction is manually keyed-in using AVS – Address Verification Service (card #, expiration date, address, zip code and CVV code all match). When a consumer credit card is keyed into a credit card terminal instead of being swiped or The cardholder uses a rewards card, business-to-business or another special type of card the transaction is charged a discount rate that is less favorable than the Qualified. This rate is called a “Mid-Qualified Rate.”
Non-Qualified Transaction This is the rate charged when manually keying-in a transaction without using AVS – Address Verification Service. When a special kind of credit card is used (like a rewards card or a business card), or a payment is not processed in accordance with the rules established in the Payment Processing Agreement, or It does not comply with some applicable security requirements.
Qualified Transaction Conditions
One electronic authorization request is made per transaction and the transaction/purchase date is equal to the authorization date. The authorization response data must also be included in the transaction settlement. The authorization transaction amount must match the settled (deposit) transaction amount. The card that is used is not a commercial (business) credit card The credit/debit card is present at the time of the transaction, the card’s full magnetic stripe is read by the terminal, and a signature is obtained from the cardholder at the time of the transaction.
The transaction must be authorized and settled under a standard retail industry code.
The transaction must be electronically deposited (batch transmitted) no later than 1 day from transaction/purchase/authorization date.
Mid-Qualified Transaction Conditions
One or more of the Qualified conditions were not met
Non-Qualified Transaction Conditions
One or more of the Qualified conditions were not met, or The card that was used was a commercial card without submitting the additional data or:
The transaction was electronically deposited (batch transmitted) greater than 1 day from the authorization date, or:
The transaction was not electronically authorized, or the authorization response data was not included in the transaction settlement.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Credit card Processing, Electronic Payments, Financial Services, Merchant Services Account Tagged with: account, authorization, authorized, best, business, card, card-not-present, credit, cvv, debit, downgrade, interchange, keying, lowest, MasterCard, merchant, payment, processed, Processing, qualified, rate, rewards, standards, swiped, transaction, visa
August 19th, 2013 by Admin
1. Use newer POS systems to reduce credit card fees.
2. Find out what percentage of your gross sales go toward credit card rates.
3. Perform a statement review at least annually.
Any time a customer uses a credit card to purchase services and goods the merchant pays various rates and fees processing those transactions. Most of these fees go to the bank issuing the credit card as they take on the bulk of the risk in credit card transactions. Visa, American Express and Discover own the network on which these credit card transactions are processed on and they receive part of the fee and percentage rate as well as establish these rates and fees. Finally the bank that provides merchant account services gets part of these rates and fees.
To a small business 2, 3, or even 4% might not sound like much but when these fees are on the gross total of sales they can be significantly higher than originally thought. For this reason it’s a great idea to assess your merchant account statement to see if rates are in line and that your most frequently used cards and transaction types are getting the best rate possible. By going over your statement, you can see exactly what you pay per transaction and get details about your most common transaction types and credit card used to get the process going. Knowing how to untangle the various levels of pricing rates and fees can be daunting if you don’t know what they mean. If you are unfamiliar with what these rates and fees mean on your statement companies like National Transaction can perform the review for you. Free of charge.
Ultimately the best thing to have is a merchant account service provider that will take the time to go over your business with an eye lowering your rates and fees. The savings can be significant. As a business grows it changes and there should be an ongoing strategy at maintaining the best processing rates and fees possible. Today with so many different credit card types, like rewards cards, airline miles programs and more it can pay off to check once or twice a year.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Credit card Processing, Electronic Payments, Merchant Services Account Tagged with: account, American Express, bank, card, credit, fees, MasterCard, merchant, process, Processing, Rates, services, Visa MasterCard American Express
August 13th, 2013 by Admin
MasterCard who has endorsed Google Wallet on the Sprint network will now endorse the ISIS network for mobile wallet solutions. Both Google and Sprint have not joined ISIS and it is interesting to see card issuers invest in both platforms. With Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile in alliance with ISIS, could Sprint be next? Google? Well count Visa and MasterCard as Isis partners. After securing American Express both Visa and MasterCard will now have their credit cards available in Isis’ Wallet. What will be in your mobile wallet?
Many mobile wallet providers are looking at the various options for electronic transaction processing. Will NFC beat out all the others? It’s hard to say but with Apple having yet to release an iPhone model with the chip on board, it could be a yet unseen technology that wins out. QR Codes and Carrier billing are gaining traction for devices without NFC installed and SmartSD cards are coming equipped with NFC to extend devices that have a card slot available.
With device limitations, mobile wallets are still in flux. There are approximately 5 different types of mobile wallets today. There are digital bank accounts similar to prepaid credit cards offered by banks and mostly used for person to person or P2P payments. Mobile payment apps that link payment accounts like those offered by Starbucks or PayPal. Card containers like Apple Passbook store credit cards and loyalty rewards card information and can even fill in forms requesting that information. Similarly, Credential and Card containers store credit card and loyalty rewards but also store identity credentials.
True mobile wallets directly mimic a physical wallet and allow the customer to chose between various credit cards, debit cards even electronic benefits transfer or EBT cards at the point of sale. These wallets are typically app based for both iPhone and Android smartphones and tablets. These wallets can link account information to a point of sale terminal via NFC or other methods for a secure electronic transaction.
Branding and Banks
In recent times Visa, MasterCard and American Express signs at the point-of-sale was a branding element designed to instill confidence for the consumer. With digital wallets becoming the interface for payments, this branding may fade into the background. Yet payment card issuers find themselves in a precarious position. The big three are participating in multiple digital wallet programs in order to not be excluded. This early in the game there are multiple movers and shakers like Square, PayPal, Lemon, Google and now banks and cellular carriers getting into the game, no one knows who consumers and merchants will eventually prefer over the others. It’s like a wait and see game that forces them to play. As banks enter the arena they are favored to win because of the solid loyalty they enjoy from their customers. Though they may not be fair in other categories, they win the security of their customers.
Posted in Credit card Processing, Digital Wallet Privacy, Electronic Payments, Mobile Payments, Mobile Point of Sale, Near Field Communication, Point of Sale, Smartphone, smartSD Cards, Visa MasterCard American Express Tagged with: American Express, Android, Apple, AT&T, google, Iphone, ISIS, MasterCard, PayPal, Square, Starbucks, T-Mobile, Verizon, Visa MasterCard American Express
Ron Klien, also known as the “Grandfather of Possibilities” is an exceptional entrepreneur, business consultant, mentor and inventor. “I solve situations by simplifying them”, says Klein. At 77, the Philadelphia native is the inventor of the magnetic strip found on nearly all of today’s credit cards. The “validity checking system” as his patent reads is a magnetic strip on the back of a plastic card that functions much like a cassette recorder. Rather than recording sounds the magnetic strip records characters that can be ‘played’ into a credit card swipe reader. Read more of this article »
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged with: credit card, electronic device, magnetic strip, MasterCard, merchant account, process, reader, swipe reader, terminal, Visa MasterCard American Express
