Embossed Card

What Is an Embossed Card?

An embossed card is an electronic payment card with engraved or stepped payment card subtleties that can be felt over the card's surface for taking a physical impression. Embossed subtleties on credit cards and debit cards ordinarily incorporate the cardholder's name and the card number.

How Embossed Cards Work

As indicated above, embossed cards accompany stepped subtleties that distinguish both the account and the cardholder. This data is raised — like braille — and is gleaming so it tends to be effortlessly seen. It incorporates the card number, cardholder's name, and expiry date. Embossed cards are generally credit and debit cards. There are a few forms of nonpayment cards that may likewise be embossed like building access/passage cards and clothing machine cards.

Card suppliers started giving embossed cards before electronic banking turned into the standard. Processing them requires more work and takes significantly longer than electronic processing. As a matter of fact, merchants are required to enter the card data and different subtleties manually either online or by telephone.

Transactions utilizing embossed cards are handled similarly as a payment handled with a point-of-sale (POS) terminal. The merchant's securing bank fills in as the primary facilitator on the transaction. They contact the processing network who then, at that point, contacts the responsible bank. The responsible bank affirms the charge, sending authorization back to the getting bank through the processor. The merchant bank then, at that point, settles the transaction and processes the deposit of funds in the merchant's account.

Special Considerations

Since by far most of transactions are presently handled electronically, it's generally at this point not important to have embossed subtleties on a payment card. For example, in 2008, Visa announced it was providing financial institutions with a decision of whether to issue embossed cards or use laser-printed cards to their clients. MasterCard likewise gives an unembossed card to its clients too. Doing so saves card companies both time and money. This is especially helpful given the way that payment cards today have chip functionality, making payment and processing practically momentary.

Visa and MasterCard give embossed and nonembossed card options for financial institutions to give to their clients.

Even with the decision, unembossed cards haven't taken off. As a matter of fact, numerous financial institutions actually give embossed cards and manual processing services to merchants. This type of payment processing calls for significantly greater investment for the merchant. It likewise has a lot higher risk.

History of Embossed Cards

Embossed card styles developed from a historic usefulness that required a physical impression of card subtleties to be made for transactions. Embossed card processing was vigorously used when electronic payment cards were first presented. The utilization of physical impressions for payment card transactions blurred as fresher technology developed which accommodated quicker and more efficient processing.

A few merchants might in any case have equipment that permits them to establish carbon connections. These impressions might be utilized what is known as a knuckle-buster or zip-destroy gadget which makes a carbon copy of the embossed data. Merchants might utilize embossed card gadgets when electronic terminals are down or when a card is harmed. In special conditions, these gadgets are utilized while taking a noncash payment. Merchants can likewise record essential data for card processing.

Features

• Embossed subtleties incorporate the card number, cardholder's name, and expiry date.
• An embossed card is an electronic payment card with engraved or stepped payment subtleties that can be felt over the card's surface.
• Merchant banks took impressions of embossed cards to deal with transactions before electronic banking.