Payment methods

Visa is a global pay­ments tech­nol­ogy com­pany that con­nects con­sumers, busi­nesses, finan­cial insti­tu­tions and gov­ern­ments in more than 200 coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries to fast, secure and reli­able dig­i­tal cur­rency. Under­pin­ning dig­i­tal cur­rency is one of the world’s most advanced pro­cess­ing net­works – VisaNet − capa­ble of han­dling more than 10,000 trans­ac­tions per sec­ond and includ­ing fraud pro­tec­tion for con­sumers and guar­an­teed pay­ment for merchants.

MasterCard’s stream­lined and intel­li­gent approach to pro­cess­ing enables effi­cient com­merce on a global scale. It uti­lizes one of the largest and most agile VPNs in the world, offer­ing unpar­al­leled speed, inte­gra­tion, and reli­a­bil­ity. MasterCard helps banks and mer­chants grow by enabling rapid adop­tion of new pay­ment meth­ods and cus­tomized solu­tions that deliver value through technology.

Amer­i­can Express, some­times known as AmEx, is a diver­si­fied global finan­cial ser­vices com­pany head­quar­tered in New York City, and pro­vid­ing cus­tomers with excep­tional access to finan­cial prod­ucts, insights and expe­ri­ences that enrich lives and build busi­ness suc­cess. Amer­i­can Express is a leader in credit cards, charge cards, travel, and insur­ance prod­ucts, and is the pre­ferred credit card for busi­nesses in the United States and beyond.

Mae­stro is the debit card from MasterCard. It pro­vides PIN-based, direct cash access to your bank account at home and abroad. It’s com­fort­ing and con­ve­nient to be able to access your money in many places across the UK for day to day pur­chases. Plus, when you carry Mae­stro abroad, you’ll enjoy card accep­tance and cash access at shops, restau­rants and cash machines in over 100 coun­tries. With Mae­stro, you can pur­chase with the utmost con­ve­nience and secu­rity, all backed by MasterCard International.

Visa Elec­tron is the most pop­u­lar debit card in Visa’s Cen­tral and East­ern Europe, Mid­dle East and Africa (CEMEA) regions — and the first Visa card most peo­ple in these regions receive. Visa Elec­tron cards are accepted all over the world and come with in-built secu­rity fea­tures that pro­tect you from acci­den­tally over­spend­ing. This makes them ideal for a wide range of busy cus­tomers − from young pro­fes­sion­als, to stu­dents and oth­ers new to bank­ing, to start-up busi­nesses and indi­vid­u­als on lim­ited budgets.

Sim­ply put, a Direct Debit is an instruc­tion from you to your bank or build­ing soci­ety autho­riz­ing an orga­ni­za­tion or indi­vid­ual to col­lect pay­ment from your account – but only if you’ve been given advance notice of the amount and date of col­lec­tion, or if recur­ring, the mutu­ally agreed upon col­lec­tion sched­ule. Once you have approved the debit, the money is deducted auto­mat­i­cally. If the entity you are pay­ing wishes to change the amount or date of col­lec­tion, they must get your approval first. Direct Debit is a sim­ple and con­ve­nient way for you to pay occa­sional and recur­ring bills.

JCB strives to be much more than a con­ven­tional pay­ment card by deliv­er­ing the high­est qual­ity ser­vices in addi­tion to offer­ing the most con­ve­nient, effi­cient, and reli­able pay­ment prod­ucts avail­able. From the begin­ning, JCB’s customer-centered focus has formed the core of its ser­vice stan­dard, ―Ser­vice from the Heart‖, the guid­ing prin­ci­pal of each and every ser­vice program.

Sofort­bank­ing is an easy to use direct credit trans­fer sys­tem based on the high secu­rity stan­dards of online bank­ing and a TÜV cer­ti­fied data pri­vacy. Using the secure pay­ment form the cus­tomer auto­mat­i­cally trig­gers a credit trans­fer. The mer­chant imme­di­ately receives a con­fir­ma­tion of the trans­fer order, which allows them to deliver the goods and ser­vices straight away.
Sofort­bank­ing is avail­able in eight Euro­pean coun­tries — Germany, Great Britain, Poland, Aus­tria, Bel­gium, The Nether­lands, Switzer­land and Italy.

giro­pay was cre­ated by Post­bank, Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe and Volksbanken-Raiffeisenbanken. Cur­rently, 17 mil­lion online bank­ing cus­tomers use giro­pay in Germany.
giro­pay is a sim­ple, fast and secure online pay­ment method based upon online bank­ing. When pay­ing with giro­pay, you are directed via a secure con­nec­tion to your online bank account at your finan­cial insti­tu­tion. There you log in with a PIN and con­firm the pay­ment with a TAN.

Din­ers Club is a glob­ally rec­og­nized brand serv­ing the pay­ment needs of select and afflu­ent con­sumers, offer­ing access to more than 350 air­port lounges world­wide, and pro­vid­ing cor­po­ra­tions and small busi­ness own­ers with a com­plete array of expense man­age­ment solu­tions. With accep­tance in more than 185 coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries, at mil­lions of mer­chant out­lets, and 750,000 cash access loca­tions and ATMs, Din­ers Club is uniquely qual­i­fied to serve icard mem­bers all over the world.

Dis­cover Finan­cial Ser­vices (NYSE: DFS) is a direct bank­ing and pay­ment ser­vices com­pany with one of the most rec­og­nized brands in U.S. finan­cial ser­vices. Since its incep­tion in 1986, the com­pany has become one of the largest card issuers in the United States. Its global pay­ment net­works − Dis­cover Net­work, PULSE and Din­ers Club − together process bil­lions of trans­ac­tions a year in 185 countries.

The ser­vice allows mem­bers to send money with­out shar­ing finan­cial infor­ma­tion, with the flex­i­bil­ity to pay using their account bal­ances, bank accounts, credit cards or pro­mo­tional financ­ing. With over 100 mil­lion active accounts in 190 mar­kets and 25 cur­ren­cies around the world, Pay­Pal enables global ecom­merce. Pay­Pal is an eBay com­pany and is made up of three lead­ing online pay­ment ser­vices: the Pay­Pal global pay­ment ser­vice, the Payflow Gate­way and Bill Me Later. The company’s open pay­ment plat­form, Pay­Pal X, allows devel­op­ers to build inno­v­a­tive pay­ment appli­ca­tions on mul­ti­ple plat­forms and devices.

iDEAL is a rel­a­tively new, stan­dard­ized pay­ment method for mak­ing secure online pay­ments, used by more than half of all Dutch online shop­pers. To offer iDEAL as a pay­ment method in an online store, a direct link is estab­lished with the sys­tems of par­tic­i­pat­ing banks. This one con­nec­tion to iDEAL cur­rently offers online con­sumers access to ABN AMRO, For­tis, ING, Rabobank and SNS Bank, pro­vid­ing flex­i­bil­ity and choice at POS. No other pay­ment prod­uct offers this.

The Sin­gle Euro Pay­ments Area (SEPA) is a Euro­pean bank­ing ini­tia­tive involv­ing cre­ation of a zone for the euro or any cur­rency whose mem­ber state wishes to par­tic­i­pate, wherein all elec­tronic pay­ments are con­sid­ered domes­tic. On a prac­ti­cal level, SEPA means that you will be able to make fast and secure trans­fers from mul­ti­ple bank accounts any­where in the euro area, cre­at­ing a seam­less user expe­ri­ence and tak­ing another step towards mak­ing the euro a truly sin­gle and fully oper­a­tional cur­rency.
The Sepa Direct Debit Scheme – like any other direct debit scheme – is based on the fol­low­ing con­cept: ―I request money from some­one else, with their prior approval, and credit it to myself‖. The payer and the biller must each hold an account with a pay­ment ser­vice provider located in SEPA. The trans­fer of funds between the payer’s bank and the biller’s bank always takes place in the euro currency.

Dankort is a national debit card issued by the Dan­ish banks. The Dan­ish com­pany PBS Hold­ing A/S and Nordito AS (now Nets, one of the lead­ing pay­ment sys­tems providers) acquired Dankort, thus any mer­chant that wishes to accept Dankort would need to enter into a mer­chant agree­ment with PBS. Today it is usu­ally com­bined with a VISA card so it can be used abroad. Cus­tomers can also use the eDankort card as means of pay­ment on the Internet.

Laser Card is an Irish-based debit card scheme. The Laser Scheme is main­tained and oper­ated by Laser Card Ser­vices Ltd., a not-for-profit body owned by the seven lead­ing finan­cial insti­tu­tions in Ire­land and over­seen since 2008 by the Cen­tral Bank. The scheme was launched in 1996 and in 2010 there were almost 3 mil­lion Laser Cards in cir­cu­la­tion; 201 mil­lion trans­ac­tions worth €11.1 bil­lion were car­ried out on those cards in 2010.

Carte Bleue is a major debit card pay­ment scheme oper­at­ing in France. Carte Bleue allows trans­ac­tions with­out requir­ing autho­riza­tion from the cardholder’s bank. In many sit­u­a­tions, the card works like a credit card but with­out fees for the card­holder. The sys­tem has now been inte­grated into a wider scheme called CB or carte ban­caire (“bank­ing card”).

Car­taSi S.p.A. offers Eurocard/MasterCard and Visa credit cards to the Ital­ian mar­ket. The com­pany issues pay­ment cards for banks, pro­vides trans­ac­tion nego­ti­a­tion ser­vices, and man­ages rela­tions with net­works of accep­tance, as well as pro­vid­ing card man­age­ment and accep­tance ser­vices on behalf of client banks.