Visa Gift Card

I saw a banner ad on a news site for “Visa Gift Card” a few days ago. O yeah. It was a neat idea. Why didn't they come up with this idea earlier?

The answer probably goes back to fifteen years ago. At the time, majority of merchants use physical devices to make an imprint of client’s credit cards to charge. The process didn’t involve electronics at all. It was probably next few days that the physical imprint was sent to the bank for deposit and verification. A merchant might call-in to verify a card, but they can not always do it. I had seen a cashier actually checked the client card number against a thick book with thousands of counterfeit number to protect themselves against fraud. Even just a few years ago, Credit Card still made you pay a big penalty if you spent beyond your limit.

They certainly can’t make the purchaser of a Visa gift card to pay penalty for over the limit, or no one will buy it. The arrival of Visa gift card signifies that physical imprint device was totally obsolete. Chick-Cuck.