Credit card services

Credit card services

Credit cards have gained so much popularity amongst the masses that no business can be termed as complete and efficient if it doesn’t use credit card services. Really, without credit card services, most of the businesses would end up losing a significant chunk of business opportunities. Some people go to the extent of classifying such businesses (which don’t use credit card services) as non-serious businesses.

So what are these credit card services that we are talking about?

In simple words, by credit card services we mean the ability to accept credit cards as a mode of payment. Well, we can also term the use of credit cards as a credit card service. However, generally, credit card services will include the services that enable acceptance of credit card by a merchant. So, for a shopkeeper, use of credit card processing machines to accept credit card payments, is a credit card service that he is providing to his customers (and he himself is receiving this credit card service from the provider of credit card processing machine and others involved in making this process so smooth). Since carrying cash is no more a common practice, any shop that doesn’t use/provide such credit card services would end up losing a lot of customers because customers can’t pay with anything other than a credit card. So, for most merchants, providing credit card services (or credit card processing services) to their customers, has become very essential part of business.

With the internet boom, came a lot of online businesses. These businesses were in the form of virtual shops (or e-shops) that existed either only on the internet or were a virtual extension of physical shops. All these businesses (some selling goods, some selling services), needed a way to accept payments from their customers. This gave birth to online credit card services. The simplest use of these online credit card services is in the form of a simple webpage/web-form that asks you to provide your credit card details. These details are then verified and processed to debit the amount from your credit card and credit it to the merchant’s accounts. Since credit card details are sensitive information, these websites started implementing mechanisms/technology to secure it and prevent it from getting in the hands of fraudsters. Such sites are now called secured websites and form the backbone of e-commerce.

Besides these basic ways of implementing credit card services, the credit card services are provided in some other forms too e.g. over-the-phone payments using credit cards, use of third party online credit card service providers who provide you with an interface to accept credit card payments.

So, there are a lot of different ways in which credit card services are implemented and as the time goes by, the expanse of these credit card services is sure to increase.

Credit Cards and Their Alternatives

Debit Cards

A debit card works very much like a credit card in that you can use it to pay for goods, services or draw money and is often ‘guaranteed’ by one of the major credit card providers, such as Visa or MasterCard. The essential difference between a debit card and a credit card is that a debit card only allows you to use a specified sum available on your account – for example, the balance on your checking account. For this reason debit cards are also commonly known as ‘secured’ credit cards.

Charge Cards

Again similar to credit cards, charge cards allow you to pay for goods and services and your purchase is ‘guaranteed’ by the card issuer – for which Amex and Dinners Club are the main issuers. However, one difference between these types of consumer credit cards is that a charge card will not allow you to carry over a balance to the next statement period and you are required to repay the balance in full on each statement payment date. As such, charge cards do not charge you interest, but rather make their money charging customers a membership fee. Also, note that some charge card companies do not set limits on how much their customers’ can spend, so their use can be a little tricky to control if you are financially disciplined!

Store Cards

The final type of consumer credit is known as a store card. Store cards vary and are a hybrid between credit cards and charge cards in that some let you carry over a balance while others do not. One common factor, however, between store cards is their use is normally limited to making payments in the chain of store of the issuer. As such, they are an ideal cheap vehicle for stores to move merchandise which may not have been sold had you not used the store card.

You may freely reprint this article provided that the author bio and live links are left intact.

Credit Cards

Credit Cards

A credit card is essentially a loan agreement between you and the card provider for a specific sum of money, known as the card limit. You then use the card to purchase goods, services or draw money, which you can then elect to repay by minimum repayments, lump-sum repayments or in whole on the specified date in your credit card statement - which is usually monthly.

With your credit limit remaining the same each month, the amount you have available to borrow each consecutive month is determined on how much you repaid in the previous month. If you do not repay the statement amount you owe each month in full, the card provider will then charge you interest on the card as a service charge. Because of the structure of credit cards, it is not uncommon for you to hear people referring to users of them as living on the “never, never”.