An affinity credit card program allows an organization to offer its members and supporters—those who have an "affinity" for that organization—a credit card branded with the organization's brand and imagery. An affinity credit card program may pay the brand owning organization a bonus for each new account generated, plus a percentage of every transaction charged to the card. In some cases the brand-owning organization will form a revenue and profit sharing joint venture on a 50/50 basis. The venture is funded by the interchange income from the card scheme such as MasterCard or Visa, fees, charges and credit lent to cardholders.
A credit card is a payment card issued to users (cardholders) to enable the cardholder to pay a merchant for goods and services based on the cardholder's promise to the card issuer to pay them for the amounts plus the other agreed charges. The card issuer creates a revolving account and grants a line of credit to the cardholder, from which the cardholder can borrow money for payment to a merchant or as a cash advance. In other words, credit cards combine payment services with extensions of credit. Complex fee structures in the credit card industry may limit customers' ability to comparison shop, helping to ensure that the industry is not price-competitive and helping to maximize industry profits. Due to concerns about this, many legislatures have regulated credit card fees.
Visa Inc. is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Foster City, California, United States. It facilitates electronic funds transfers throughout the world, most commonly through Visa-branded credit cards, gift cards, and debit cards. 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 2015, the Nilson Report, a publication that tracks the credit card industry, found that Visa's global network processed 100 billion transactions during 2014 with a total volume of US$6.8 trillion.
Affinity credit cards are offered by many retailers, shopping centers, airlines, universities, alumni associations, sports teams, professional associations and others, and increasingly by small and mid-sized nonprofits and membership-based groups that rely on these programs for incremental revenue.
A debit card is a plastic payment card that can be used instead of cash when making purchases. It is similar to a credit card, but unlike a credit card, the money is immediately transferred directly from the cardholder's bank account when performing a transaction.
Electronic funds transfer at point of sale is an electronic payment system involving electronic funds transfers based on the use of payment cards, such as debit or credit cards, at payment terminals located at points of sale. EFTPOS technology originated in the United States in 1981 and was adopted by other countries. In Australia and New Zealand, it is also the brand name of a specific system used for such payments; these systems are mainly country specific and do not interconnect.
Loyalty programs are structured marketing strategies designed by merchants to encourage customers to continue to shop at or use the services of businesses associated with each program. These programs exist covering most types of commerce, each one having varying features and rewards-schemes.
A charge card is a card that provides a direct debit payment method enabling the cardholder to make purchases which are paid for by the card issuer, to whom the cardholder becomes indebted. The cardholder is obligated to repay the debt to the card issuer in full by the due date, usually on a monthly basis, or be subject to late fees and restrictions on further card use. Charge cards are distinct from credit cards in that credit cards are revolving credit instruments that do not need to be paid in full every month and a balance may be carried over, on which an interest is paid. Charge cards are typically issued without spending limits, but credit cards usually have a specified credit limit that the cardholder may not exceed.
Discover is a credit card brand issued primarily in the United States. It was introduced by Sears in 1985. When launched, Discover did not charge an annual fee and offered a higher-than-normal credit limit, features that were disruptive to the existing credit card industry. A subsequent innovation was "Cashback Bonus" on purchases.
Dean Witter Reynolds was an American stock brokerage and securities firm catering to retail clients. Prior to the company's acquisition, it was among the largest retail firms in the securities industry with over 9,000 account executives and was among the largest members of the New York Stock Exchange. The company served over 3.2 million clients primarily in the U.S. Dean Witter provided debt and equity underwriting and brokerage as mutual funds and other saving and investment products for individual investors. The company's asset management arm, Dean Witter InterCapital, with total assets of $90.0 billion prior to acquisition, was one of the largest asset management operations in the U.S.
Visa Debit is a major brand of debit card issued by Visa in many countries around the world. Numerous banks and financial institutions issue Visa Debit cards to their customers for access to their bank accounts. In many countries the Visa Debit functionality is often incorporated on the same plastic card that allows access to ATM and any domestic networks like EFTPOS or Interac.
Verifone is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Jose, California, that provides technology for electronic payment transactions and value-added services at the point-of-sale. Verifone sells merchant-operated, consumer-facing and self-service payment systems to the financial, retail, hospitality, petroleum, government and healthcare industries. The company's system solutions consist of POS electronic payment devices that run its own operating systems, security and encryption software, and certified payment software, and that are designed for both consumer-facing and unattended environments.
Linux Fund is an organization that has been raising money and making donations to Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) projects since 1999.
Loyalty marketing is an approach to marketing, based on strategic management, in which a company focuses on growing and retaining existing customers through incentives. Branding, product marketing, and loyalty marketing all form part of the customer proposition – the subjective assessment by the customer of whether to purchase a brand or
not based on the integrated combination of the value they receive from each of these marketing
disciplines.
The payment card industry (PCI) denotes the debit, credit, prepaid, e-purse, ATM, and POS cards and associated businesses.
Eurocard was a credit card, introduced in 1964 by a Swedish banker in the Wallenberg family as an alternative to American Express. In 1968, it signed a deal with the Interbank Card Association so that their cards were accepted by each other's networks; this eventually led to a joint venture known as Maestro International in 1992, and merger in 2002.
Velocity Frequent Flyer is the frequent-flyer program of Virgin Australia.
Affinity marketing is a concept that consists of a partnership between a company (supplier) and an organization that gathers persons sharing the same interests to bring a greater consumer base to their service, product or opinion. The first academic approach of affinity marketing has been provided by Macchiette and Roy in 1992 and they described this notion as a combination of affinity and the marketing ideas. They defined the word affinity as "an individual level of cohesiveness, social bonding, identification and conformity to the norms and standards of a particular reference group" whereas marketing is described to be the "expectation of benefit for the individual satisfying consumer wants and needs". An affinity group is a group which has a solid connection with a considerable number of consumers and which has the possibility to target them in a much easier way than what can be accomplished by way of ordinary marketing process. People may recognize themselves in affinity groups such as charitable organizations, football teams, enterprises, companies, and organizations. Thus, affinity group members may be fans, customers, subscribers, or staff members.
Rede known as Redecard is a Brazilian multi-brand acquirer with 25 brands in its portfolio, for credit, debit and benefit cards. Its activities include merchant acquiring, capturing, transmission, processing and settlement of credit and debit card transactions, prepayment of receivables to merchants, rental of POS terminals, check verification through POS terminals, credit card machine and the capture and transmission of transactions using benefit-voucher, private-label cards and loyalty programs such as Multiplus. The company is the first largest in its sector. The company was traded in BM&F Bovespa and disclosed in 2012, 24, September.
SparkBase, LLC was a stored-value and gift card transaction processor located in Cleveland, Ohio, United States from 2004 to 2016. It provided private-label, stored-value, specialty gift cards, customer loyalty, and community rewards programs to Independent Sales Organizations. ISOs then sold these gift and loyalty products to merchant customers along with credit card services and processing equipment.
SBI Cards & Payments Services Pvt. Ltd. (SBICPSL) is a payment solutions provider in India. It is incorporated as a joint venture between the State Bank of India, India's largest bank, and The Carlyle Group. They are headquartered in Gurgaon, Haryana/Delhi NCR and have branches in over 50 cities across India. For the financial year ending March 31, 2016, SBI Card recorded a net profit of ₹271 crore and a profit before tax of about ₹438 crore. As of November 2017, the company has a customer base of 5 million credit cards.
Card transaction data is financial data generally collected through the transfer of funds between a card holder's account and a business's account. It consists of the use of either a debit card or a credit card to generate data on the transfer for the purchase of goods or services. Transaction data describes an action composed of events in which master data participates. Transaction focuses on the price, discount and method of payment interaction between the customer and the organization. They are based on volatility as each transaction data changes every time a purchase is made, one time it could be $10, the next $55. Since debit and credit cards are commonly used to pay for goods and services, they represent a strong percentage of the consumption expenditure in the country.