I need an FAQ on debit cards, credit cards, mastercard , maestro visa etc

Thanks for letting us know.

:)

a PLEASE would be f****ing nice !!!!

Well it's good that you have started looking now, rather than leaving it until the night before school starts and you have to hand in the project.

Are you planning on using these cards to verify details with ebay/paypal?

You certainly can use them to set up accounts of ebay.

Have you also seen this:-

No cards, you just buy a prepay "visa" number, which you can use online. Expensive way of doing it though.

you need a credit card and a debit card. you must repay the amounts asked for on time. the debit card needs some money kept in its account ready for use and is the convenient way to access a bank account, the credit card does not. the debit card you use your own money, the credit card you are borrowing the banks money. the terms vary between providers, some are very expensive, some less so. the more expensive ones are easier to obtain.

either card can be ruinous if used unwisely

yada yada

what a hopeless ng

Yep, you'll just have to pay one of those essay websites to do your homework for you. Of course, you need a credit card to do that ....

Go to

and enter the word then follow the links.

Peter Crosland

if you know, then why ask?

I think this is a followup to a previous thread about 360money.com where he asked if he could use the 360money.com maestro in the same places as normal ones.

Well, there are two main providers of cards, Visa and Mastercard, and they provide three different types of card.

Electron (Visa) and Solo (Mastercard) are debit cards where payments can only be authorised online. This is to prevent the account from becoming overdrawn. A lot of merchants don't accept them for this reason, particularly for Customer Not Present transactions. The merchant's charge is normally a fixed fee per transaction.

Visa Debit and Maestro (Mastercard) are debit cards where payments can be authorised online or offline. They are widely accepted by merchants. Charge is again normally a fixed fee per transaction.

Chargebacks for debit cards are not possible except in cases of fraud, and where chip & pin is used, payment is pretty much guaranteed to the merchant.

Visa and Mastercard are credit cards. Again, payments can be authorised online or offline, and they are widely accepted by merchants. The charge is normally a percentage of the transaction value, and chargebacks are possible in a much wider range of situations. so for this reason, some merchants such as car dealers won't accept them for high value transactions.

The other main provider you are likely to see is American Express. There charges are generally higher than for Visa and Mastercard, so they are less widely accepted. They offer credit cards, which for the consumer work the same way as Visa and Mastercards, and charge cards, where the consumer has to pay the full balance each month.

Prepay visas and mastercards, and amex travellers cheque cards, are not credit cards, but rather deposit accounts with a card withdrawal facility. However they work the same way as credit cards as far as the merchant is concerned.

If you use a credit card to make a purchase, then, in many cases, under the consumer credit act, the bank is jointly liable with the merchant for any breaches of contract / sale of goods act etc. This gives you additional protection. You do not have this protection with a debit card or a prepaid card.