How to Pay Using Visa - Paper Example

In todays business world, most of the transactions are made using Visa. Visa is the largest payment processing platform in the world and handles most of the card transactions that are made daily. The Visa system includes services, products, technology, and other marketing programs that make the electronic exchange of funds and information possible among merchants, institutions, consumers, non-profits, businesses, and governments. The rules that enable the financial transactions are defined by Visa so that transactions can be carried out reliably and safely.

A Visa payment system is made up of several entities who take part in every transaction that is conducted. One is the merchant, who is a business owner that is authorized to accept the Visa cards for payments of goods and services (Dwyer, 2017). The second entity that is involved is the merchant bank, which is the financial institution and also a member of Visa that has contracted merchants to accept Visa Card payments for products or services. The third entity is the cardholder who is the authorized user of a given Visa card. The fourth is the issuer, which is a financial institution and member of Visa that issues Visa Cards and agrees with the card owner regarding billing and payment of the transactions. Visa works with financial institutions which issue the Visa cards to their customers and also signs agreements with merchants to accept payment using Visa cards (Dwyer, 2017). Visa is in charge of providing the cards and promoting Visa as a brand. It also establishes the rules and regulations governing the process of making transactions and payments. The largest retail electronic payments in the world are operated by Visa today.

All the entities stated above to take part in making any transaction successful. The cardholder gives his or her card to make payment. The data in that particular card is read from the card using the point-of-sale device, and the cardholder or merchants enter their key. The merchant then transmits the information of that transaction to the acquirer who then sends a transaction approval request to Visa. Visa sends an authorization request to the issuer which is the financial institution or may perform the process itself by authorizing or declining the transaction (Dwyer, 2017). Visa sends authorization to the acquirer who in turn routes the approval response to the merchant. The Visa payment method involves three steps which are authorization, clearing, and settlement. Authorization is the approval of the transaction by the issuer, clearing is the transmission of the final transaction information from the acquirers to the issuers for settlement. Lastly, settlement refers to the exchange of funds between the issuers and acquirers for all the transactions that successfully been cleared.

The merchants should ensure that the customer has signed the sales receipt (if necessary) and to compare the signature given to the one on the back of that card. Depending on the Visa card type the customer is using and the POS terminal, the customer should sign the receipt as the merchant looks and also ensure that that the signature is given and the one on the card are identical (Dwyer, 2017). It is also important for the customer to hide their pin number as they key it in the POS to prevent fraud and for privacy. The merchant should then compare the name on the card and well as the one on the receipt.

References

Dweyr, B. (2017). Credit Card Processing. How it Works. Retrieved from https://www.cardfellow.com/how-credit-card-processing-works/