Today’s credit cards are designed with multiple complex security features to prevent the possibility of fraud:
The card account number
- The card’s unique account number is the key piece of information needed to conduct a financial transaction and must be carefully protected.
Magnetic strip
- The magnetic strip on the back of the card is encoded with binary information, which identifies the card as authentic.
Signature panel
- The signature panel is intended to document the owner’s handwriting so a forged signature on a receipt can be detected.
Card verification number
- The verification number is a secondary security feature on the signature panel.
- A three digit code that appears just to the right of the signature panel. This is used primarily in card-not-present transactions to verify that the customer is in possession of a valid Visa card at the time of sale.
Note: Visa refers to this as the CVV2 number. MasterCard refers to it as the CVC2 number and American Express/Discover refer to it as the CID number.
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