Most businesses have a merchant account, which is a special bank account that allows the merchant to accept your payment by using your debit card or your credit card. Remember back when you used to make a charge on your credit card and the merchant would lay the card down on the machine and then swipe the imprinter over top of the card and imprint all the information, making two copies, one for you and one for the merchant, and then these would be mailed or telephoned in to the network? These methods are still in use and are still work very well, but that was the old way.
Today those payments are sent through a credit card terminal. This terminal accepts the payment placed on your debit or credit card for the sale of goods from the merchant to you. It is a piece of electronic equipment that stands alone and allows the merchant or you to swipe the magnetic field part of your card or they can also manually key enter the information on your card which is then sent either by telephone, cellular phone or Internet to the network to be verified.
With the electronic method used today, your information is encrypted and this is much safer because the merchant does not have your sensitive information which is passed between the customer and the merchant, and then between the merchant and the processor. This allows for safer transactions. A merchant bank, the retailer and the payment processor have an agreement together which serves as the merchant account because it acts as the settlement for transactions you have made on your credit or debit card.
In a nutshell, the most important thing to the consumer is the fact that when you go to a merchant and purchase a product from them, you swipe your credit card through an electronic piece of equipment which then encrypts your pertinent and sensitive information safely to record your sale. This information is then sent from the retailer to the merchant bank where the sale is processed. Your debit or credit card is safely charged the amount of the sale. The best merchant accounts will be the most secure.
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