How are credit card and/or e-check transactions processed?
Credit cards must be authorized before they are accepted. In a traditional store, the merchant runs a card’s magnetic strip through a card reader, and sends the information over dedicated lines to their card processing center. An authorization reply is returned within seconds. With Internet credit card sales, the customer types the card data and the online store sends it by Internet connections to the same card processing center as the traditional store. The authorization reply returns within seconds, and the customer is notified whether or not the card can be used for the sale. Customers who have previously purchased goods or services with a credit card will find the e-check data input process very familiar. The customer is asked to provide the Magnetic Image Character Recognition (MICR) exactly as it is printed on the check. The data that the customer supplies is screened and analyzed using proprietary databases, algorithms, risk management resources and other databases. The data is
