Characteristics of Stored Value Cards

written by: Rudolph Jig; article published: year 2006, month 09;



In: Categories » Internet » Auctions and online payments » Characteristics of Stored Value Cards

The principal function of stored-value or smart cards is the portable storage and retrieval of data. These applications have evolved from existing electronic funds transfer mechanisms using debit cards, such as prepaid cards and copy machine cards. The embedded integrated circuit on the card defines the capabilities of the product, and possible components may include a microprocessor, nonstatic random access memory (RAM), read only memory (ROM), erasable programmable read only memory (EPROM), other nonvolatile memory, and special purpose coprocessors.

These characteristics make smart cards a viable medium for a digital currency payment system. In making a payment through stored-value cards, the following points can be noted:

  • There are no backend settlements involved.

  • There is no audit trail for transactions.

  • If a card is lost, the same result is achieved when actual cash is lost—it’s gone.

  • Developers are working on ways to deliver card-to-card funds transfers

Stored-value cards have met with high approval ratings among consumers in Europe, and are gaining increasing popularity in the United States. Stored-value smart cards are capable of more than facilitating payments. They can offer added-value information, including digital certificates for identification purposes, and may authenticate a secure transaction.

It is worth noting that computer hardware manufacturers have started to include smart card readers with their PCs and PC keyboards. The ubiquity of this digital currency system in on the rise.

legal disclaimer

1) Our website is not responsible for the information contained by this article as well for any and all copyright infringements by authors and writers. E-articles is a free information resource. If you suspect this article for any copyright infringements, please read the Terms of service and contact us to investigate the problem.
2) The E-articles directory team is not responsible for inaccuracies, falsehoods, or any other types of misinformation this tutorial may contain and will not be liable for any loss or damage suffered by a user through the user's reliance on the information gained here. Please read the Terms of service

Useful tools and features

Translate this article to...    Send this article to you or to a friend

Link to this article from your page   
If you like this article (tutorial), please link to it from your web page using the information above. Linking to this page, this is the only way to help us improve our service, the same time providing your visitors with a way to improve their online experience.

related articles

1. Bill and Invoice Presentment and Settlement (BIPS) Access and Distribution Models
There are two basic models for BIPS: the biller-direct model (whether hosted internally or outsourced) and the consolidator model. In the biller-direct approach, the customer goes directly to the biller’s site to access and pay bills. In the consolidator model, a third party aggregates billing data from many billers, providing customers with one site to visit to pay multiple bills. Both the biller-direct approach and the consolidator approach have advantages and disadvantages, but both models will continue to coexist....

2. How Payment Processing Works
Payment processing in the online world is similar to payment processing in the offline or “Brick and Mortar” world, with one significant exception. In the online world, the card is “not present” at the transaction. This means that the merchant must take additional steps to verify that the card information is being submitted by the actual owner of the card. Payment processing can be divided into two major phases or steps: authorization and settlement INFO: Payment Processing—Authorization an...

3. What You Should Know About Credit Card Fraud
Credit card fraud can be a significant problem for customers, merchants, and credit card issuers Liability for fraudulent transactions belongs to the credit card issuer for a card-present, in-store transaction, but shifts to the merchant for “card not present” transactions, including transactions conducted online. This means that the merchant does not receive payment for a fraudulent online transaction. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to significantly limit your risk as an online merchant. The following i...

4. Alternative International E Commerce Payment Solutions
A popular alternative for international e-commerce payments solutions today, especially on Web auction exchanges, is the person-to-person payment system, such as PayPal. Many former Buy-It! Button merchants are switching to PayPal. These systems allow you to make payments to anyone with an e-mail address, even if they do not have an account. You can also place a PayPal button on your Web page to accept payments by setting up an account. PayPal claims to have over 10 million accounts and is a major player on e...

5. What to Look for in a Payment Processing Solution
Finding a reliable, secure, and flexible payment processing solution for your business is critical, so it’s important to take the time to investigate and assess the options available to you. A payment processing solution should: Reliably and cost-effectively accept and process a variety of payment types, including credit cards and electronic checks. Not only does this reduce lost sales, but it also enhances the quality of your site by allowing your customers the freedom and flexibility to pay...

6. How to Help Banks Move to Smart Cards
In order to migrate to smart-card-based payment systems, banks will have to make a number of changes to their existing systems. Among these are: Enhancements to the card issuing process Enhancements to the card personalization process Enhancements to the systems that handle card transactions Enhancements to the Card Issuing Process Existing systems were developed, often many years ago, to h...

7. Auction Management Services
The auction management service is a great invention. I can’t say too many times that you cannot achieve cost-effectiveness in your eBay retail business without the use of an auction management service. Whether you use eBay’s auction management service or a third-party vendor’s auction management service is not important. What’s important is that you use some service to keep track of your eBay auctions and sales or else you will not be able to provide first-rate customer service and will likely go insane trying t...

8. Creating Yahoo Ads
Yahoo Shopping is similar to Froogle. You just do a datafeed and your products magically appear in Yahoo Shopping as product catalog entries. What a deal! Unfortunately, as easy as this is to do, it’s also expensive. Yahoo Shopping is going to charge you for every clickthrough. This charge seems small. If you assume that every clickthrough is a sale, the fees don’t look like much. It’s unlikely, however, that each click-through will be a sale. The ratio of click-throughs to sales will be different for different kinds...

9. Creating Auction Ads for Marketplaces
There are dozens of other datafeed marketplaces on the Web other than Froogle and Yahoo Shopping. On one hand, you can expect a big consolidation among the existing datafeed marketplaces. On the other hand, you can expect new datafeed marketplaces to pop up all over the place. Datafeed marketplaces are the latest killer ap in ecommerce. If you’re going to take advantage of datafeed marketplaces, you’ll have to have software that will create the proper datafeeds. It would be nice if the datafeed requirements of other datafe...

10. Creating Froogle Ads
OK, so you know how to do a datafeed. You’re ready to go. This is quite exciting. By using a datafeed to create Froogle catalog product entries, you are expanding your market substantially. The real story here is not so much that Froogle can perhaps double your potential market. The real story here is that this is an incredibly cost-effective way to expand your market on the Web. Froogle was free in Beta and it’s apparent since it’s been out of Beta that Google is committed to keeping Froogle a marketplace th...