From: Alex 
Newsgroups: uk.finance
Subject: Re: Credit card madness.
Date: 11 Nov 2004 13:49:43 GMT

Without a hint of irony, Ronald Raygun  
astounded uk.finance on 11 Nov 2004 by announcing:

> john boyle wrote:
> 
>> In message <83m5p0t2horhfj76q20idp392q59vsqs2o@4ax.com>, Chris Blunt
>>  writes
>>>If the internet is cheap and secure enough to allow me to log on to my
>>>bank or credit card account from anywhere in the world 24/7 and move
>>>thousand of pounds around, why is it not cheap and secure enough to
>>>allow a merchant to obtain a credit card authorisation from the card
>>>issuer 24/7?
>> 
>> Why not just think abut it a bit more?  You are describing a one to one
>> link with only a tiny proportion of a banks clients on line at any one
>> time.
>> 
>> This bears no comparison with a pan world network with 100s of millions
>> of card holders, using many millions of retail outlets and connected to
>> thousands of card issuers, the last two connections being on line
>> continuously for much of the day. And the level of security would need
>> to be very much higher.
> 
> You're basically saying "because we don't have the technology".
> You might have been right 15 or even 10 years ago, but not any longer.
> I'd say it's perfectly feasible for the larger merchants to be on line
> 24/7

A lot of them are.  However, it's would be highly impractical to have a 
connection directly to each issuer.  Who is going to inform every merchant 
whenever a new card range is allocated?  Why not just inform them when a card 
*scheme* is allocated and leave it up to the acquirer to forward the requests 
via VISA/Mastercard or whoever else?

The issue isn't that the merchant doesn't contact the issuer, it's whether 
they contact their acquirer and whether the acquirer contacts the issuer 
before giving the authorisation.