Life lesson - In case you're not aware

FormerBoater wrote:

Effy wrote:

FormerBoater wrote:

jkmac408 wrote:
.

Visa and MasterCard do make the rules. There are literally volumes of rules and regulations published by both Associations that dictate what Issuers, Acquirers and Merchants can and cannot do with regard to the payment system.

And yes, I did work for a Visa/MC member institution for many years prior to retirement.

Well you are just plain wrong. No other way to really say that.
Not sure what member institution you worked for or in what capacity but it obviously wasn't the IS flow.And what in the world does onboarding or acquisitions have to do with this?

V and MC are processors. They are not a governing body. They may house rules in their engines but they do not make them. That's the FED, OCC and the banks. Sure they'll provide supporting documentation of how your client profiles are set but they do not tell the banks what to do. It's the other way around. They aren't even the ACH. They process transactions, some of which are payments based on transaction codes. One code = payment, one = block, etc. There are hundreds. The flow goes something like this - card members are on boarded at the bank - either at a branch or on line, a profile is created and warehoused (in house or FDR or some other repository). An account profile and customer profile are separate and linked by a primary key (usually systemically assigned and indigenous to the bank), statuses, rules and any other behavior is set at the BANK/ISSUER. Not at the processor. The profile might be sent to the processor for transaction purposes but it's sent to the processor NOT the other way around. The BANK tells the processor (V and MC) how to behave. Again, not the other way around. So when ABC bank says set this population of accounts (grouped by product keys, FIMP or some other demographic code) to perform with this set of codes, that's what the processor does. it follows instructions based on settings defined at the bank/issuer level. Payment processing (which is not what we are talking about) is defined at the ACH and FED level and the processors behave accordingly. But no mistake about it, V and MC are not telling banks or the FED how they will process payments or any other transaction. It's the other way around.

Visa Inc. (/?vi?z?/ or /?vi?s?/) is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Foster City, California, United States.[citation needed] It facilitates electronic funds transfers throughout the world, most commonly through Visa-branded credit cards and debit cards.[3] Visa does not issue cards, extend credit or set rates and fees for consumers; rather, Visa provides financial institutions with Visa-branded payment products that they then use to offer credit, debit, prepaid and cash-access programs to their customers.

In summary, the banks are customers who use VISA and MC to process transactions. VISA is a vendor. The bank is the customer. The vendor(Visa/MC) does work for the customer(bank) based on what the customer(bank) needs. VISA may have rules for merchants as far as minimum charge processing etc. But VISA can't even enforce that. The Bank/issuer enforces that to the merchant.