VISA NET CONCEPT

PRESENTED BY-ANKITA GUPTA

ROLL NO.- 1M.COM (HONOURS)- 2nd SEMESTER

CONNECTING THE WORLD…

Visa operates VisaNet, the world’s largest retail electronic payments processing network, handling an average of 150 million transactions every day.

In total, more than $5.9 trillion in global consumer spend is transacted on Visa-branded payment products annually.

Underlying these products is a robust set of processing services that are powered by VisaNet — including core transaction processing, risk management and information-based services.

These services can be tailored to individual countries or regions and serve the needs of financial institutions, governments, businesses, merchants and consumers around the globe.

Every day, VisaNet connects up to 1.93 billion cards, millions of acceptance locations, 1.9 million ATMs and 15,200 financial institutions. 

VISA NET PAYMENT SYSTEM (A CATALYST OF CHANGE)

Visa continues to provide consumers, businesses and governments with a better form of payment.

Since VisaNet's inception as one of the world's first electronic credit card authorization systems, Visa has invested valuable time and assets into continually improving, refining and expanding its global processing system.

This investment ensures VisaNet stays ahead of growing demand for electronic payments, as people use Visa in more ways than ever before.

A SINGULAR VISIONVisa has a singular vision: To provide consumers, businesses and governments with a

better form of payment. Since VisaNet began in the early 1970s, there has been a

fundamental shift away from traditional forms of payment — cash and cheques — to more convenient, reliable and secure electronic payments.

The speed, flexibility and reliability of VisaNet have been a major catalyst in this shift.

VISA OVERVIEW

VisaNet is the Visa transaction processing network.

The term applies to all components of the network, from the hardware, software, and communications facilities that connect the Visa network with members’ systems and with other networks, to the systems that perform all transaction processing and system services.

VisaNet routes transactions between acquirers and issuers through its global transaction processing network.

Depending on the Visa region, VisaNet supports:

Purchase, cash, and bill payment transactions made with any Visa card, including contactless cards.

Recurring payment transactions, as well as prepaid card transactions that allow partial approvals.

Purchase transactions made with major travel and entertainment (T&E) cards.

Purchase and cash transactions made with other private-label and proprietary cards.

These transactions are processed through VisaNet’s authorization, clearing, and settlement services, which are available to members in all Visa regions. Visa defines these basic services as follows:

Authorization is when the issuer approves or declines a sales transaction before a purchase is finalized or cash is disbursed.

Clearing is when a transaction is delivered from an acquirer to an issuer for posting to the cardholder’s account.

Settlement is the process of calculating and determining the net financial position of each member for all transactions that are cleared. The actual exchange of funds is a separate process.

A HISTORY OF INNOVATION… Key milestones in VisaNet’s history include:

1973 – National BankAmericard Inc. (NBI) launches one of the first electronic authorization system, followed a year later by an electronic clearing and settlement system, the precursors to VisaNet.

1986 – Visa becomes the first payment card system to offer multiple-currency clearing and settlement, providing financial institutions with faster restitution and greatly increasing transaction efficiency.

1993 – Visa is the first to apply state-of-the-art neural network technologies to payments, potentially reducing fraud by giving Visa member banks smarter and timelier data about suspicious transactions.

1995 – Visa co-develops industry-wide chip card specifications, Europay /MasterCard/Visa (EMV), to ensure that all chip cards operate with all chip-reading terminals.

2005 – Visa opens a new transaction processing center and implements a new, re-engineered authorization processing platform with a streamlined, modular architecture to expand the capacity and capabilities of VisaNet. This paves the way for the next generation of Visa transaction processing and value-added services.

2007 – Visa launches the Visa mobile platform, a business and technology framework for facilitating mobile payments and value-added services.

2009 – Visa upgrades VisaNet’s authorization operating system, significantly expanding processing memory and improving the speed and intelligence of the processing engine. The system can now perform complex processing functions with no impact on transaction speed.

2011 – Visa continues to provide consumers, businesses and governments with a better form of payment. Since VisaNet's inception as one of the world's first electronic credit card authorization systems, Visa has invested valuable time and assets into continually improving, refining and expanding its global processing system. This investment ensures VisaNet stays ahead of growing demand for electronic payments, as people come to use Visa in more ways than ever before.

VISA PRODUCTSVisa offers products that access a cardholder’s line of credit as

well as a cardholder’s checking or savings account. Visa products include:

Visa Debit—Visa Debit (known in the United States [U.S.] region as Visa check card II) is a debit card program accepted at any Visa merchant or ATM location. The amount of each purchase is automatically deducted from the cardholder’s deposit account.

Visa Electron—Visa Electron is a global acceptance mark that can be used for payment and for cash access in electronic merchant environments and through the Visa global ATM network. All transactions are authorized by the issuer and are verified by the cardholder with either a PIN or a signature.

Visa Horizon—Visa Horizon is a single currency payment application that can be used both for cash disbursements and for purchases. The service uses chip cards and ATMs. Issuers determine cardholder spending limits, and all transactions require a PIN.

Visa Interlink—Visa Interlink (known in the U.S. region as Interlink) is a single-message deposit access service that offers all electronic processing at the POS. Cardholders can use their ATM card to make purchases at participating retail locations and to request cash back from their purchases. Interlink requires the cardholder to enter a PIN.

Plus—Plus is an ATM card program available to Visa members worldwide. Plus System, Inc., using the Plus network, provides ATM interchange for cards bearing the PLUS logo. PLUS access requires PIN verification.

VISANET TRANSACTION FLOW

1. The transaction begins when a card is inserted at an ATM or is swiped or keyed at a point-of-sale or point-of-service (POS) terminal.

POS and ATM transactions can also be initiated using contactless technology; that is, cardholder data is transferred from the card to the terminal without physical contact.

The terminal prompts the cardholder for a personal identification number (PIN), if applicable.

2. The merchant creates a financial request message and forwards it to the acquirer. The request includes the transaction type, the merchant name, the encrypted PIN, and the transaction amount.

3.The acquirer logs the request, excluding the PIN information, and forwards the message to VisaNet.

4. The V.I.P. System logs the transaction, performs currency conversion if requested, and routes the message to the issuer. Routing is based on the card number and on routing options selected by the acquirer and by the issuer.

5.The issuer verifies the PIN, checks the transaction amount against the account’s available balance or open-to-buy balance, and checks daily activity limits and other controls, if any.

The issuer logs the transaction and, for approved transactions, places a hold on the funds or reduces the cardholder’s available balance by the amount of the transaction.

The issuer creates an authorization or financial response message based on the results of these edits and sends it to VisaNet.

6. V.I.P. logs the message and forwards it to the acquirer.

7. The acquirer logs the financial response and forwards it to the merchant to complete the transaction. The acquirer ensures that the response is successfully delivered. If the cardholder did not enter a PIN earlier, the cardholder’s signature is required.

AN UNRIVALED NETWORK…

Fast – On average, transactions are processed in less than a single second, providing merchants and financial institutions with immediate business-critical risk information, while offering a superior account holder experience.

Secure – VisaNet employs multiple defense layers to prevent breaches, combat fraud and render compromised card data unusable. These defense layers include data encryption, network intrusion detection and neural network technologies.

Reliable – VisaNet’s multiple redundant systems ensure near-100 percent availability. Our self-correcting network can detect problems in an instant and automatically trigger resolution processes.

Flexible – Visa’s processing systems are designed for maximum flexibility. VisaNet supports an unrivaled line up of payment, payment-related, risk management and information products and services. This allows Visa’s clients, in turn, to offer their customers more payment choices and easier access to — and greater control over — their finances.

Scalable – VisaNet processes more than 92 billion transactions each year. On Visa’s busiest single day last year, VisaNet processed more than 200 million authorization transactions. Annual VisaNet stress tests show a network capable of processing hundreds of millions of transactions per day

TECHNOLOGY LEADERSHIP VisaNet’s centralized processing architecture is a competitive

advantage for Visa and has been a catalyst for the global migration from cash and cheques to electronic forms of payment.

The network’s flexibility enables Visa to meet the growing demand for electronic payments around the world by connecting new acceptance locations and extending the reach of Visa’s products and services to even the most remote areas — bringing the security, reliability and convenience of electronic payments to geographies where they don’t exist today.

At the same time, VisaNet has allowed Visa to be the first to market with real-time, information-based services such as enhanced risk management, dispute processing and customized loyalty programs.

REFERENCES http://www.m2mgroup.ma/livresetdocs/S

UPPORTS%20VISA/VISA_Pub/Publications%20techniques/VIP%20system%20overview.pdf

http://corporate.visa.com/about-visa/technology/history.shtml

http://corporate.visa.com/about-visa/technology-index.shtml

http://sosc-dr.sun.com/third-party/global/eds/collateral/visanet.pdf