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"Credit cards" are also issued by banks. Visa and Mastercard are just brands and payment networks, not financial institutions themselves. For a long time now (
by nknighthb 13y ago
"Credit cards" are also issued by banks. Visa and Mastercard are just brands and payment networks, not financial institutions themselves.
For a long time now (better part of 20 years?) US banks have commonly issued debit cards that can also be used as if they were Visa- or Mastercard-branded credit cards. They come out of the same number space and have little Visa or Mastercard logos on them. The transactions pass through the same networks using the same infrastructure, it's just that when they land at your bank, the number being adjusted is the balance on your checking account, rather than the balance on a revolving line of credit.
- darklajid 13y agoThanks for the explanation. The debit cards I know list your account number (local to the bank) and certainly doesn't follow the format of CC numbers. You can see a very real example on the Maestro page of Wikipedia [1]. I'm with a related bank, my card is very similar to that one. Over here the debit card is usually called 'EC card' (see the logo on the image, plus [2]) and you can pay with it ~everywhere~ (stores, restaurants, parking spots - whereever you expect to pay with a card 90% of the time that's working with these. The 10% are crap, newish and .. want a cc). 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maestro_(debit_card) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maestro_(debit_card) 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_cash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_cash