Creditcard (CC)
Visa card/master card/American express card
High payout
Collection included
Near-time statistics
Payment every 14 days
The world-wide mostly used payment system with more than 2 billions distributed credit cards and millions of acceptance sites.
Also in online-commerce (e-Business) most international payments are done with the classical credit card (with varied ratio in different countries).
E.g., in 2003 credit cards of the five largest companies were used more than 57 billion times whereat a volume of more than 4.500 billion dollars was
transferred.
For internet payments almost all credit cards are eligible, the classical credit card as well as debit cards (prepaid) or virtual credit cards, which were developed for the use in the internet.
Credit card payments are usually secured through a SSL data transfer and the card check digit and are instantly authorized. It is possible to assign amounts that can be charged secured within a certain time period.
A relatively new protection of card payments is 3dSecure (verified by Visa), which authorizes the card holder additionally to the card data by entry of a PIN which is authorized by MasterCard/Visa.
In parallel to this, the protection of the card data at vendors, processors or acquirer should be increased through a security certification (PCI procedure).
In Germany credit card payments are the second-most used online-payment method, following the classical direct debit entry.


