| Here's a minor technical correction about payments lingo. Visa and Mastercard aren't issuers. Payments are kind of a world of their own, but basically there are 5 parties involved in a credit card purchase: 1. The party that receives the payment. For example, a retailer like Amazon or Target. In payments lingo: "merchant". 2. The merchant's bank. This is where funds are going to end up. In payments lingo: "acquiring bank" or "acquirer" (because they're acquiring funds I guess). 3. The customer's bank. This is where funds are going to come from. Usually on credit. For example, Citi, Capital One, Chase, HSBC, Bank of America. In payments lingo: "issuing bank" or "issuer" (because the customer has an account with them and they issue the actual card). 4. The customer, the person who makes the purchase. This person's name is printed on the credit card. In payments lingo: "cardholder". 5. A payments network. These arrange payments (including operating computer networks as well as defining rules and policies) and facilitate the purchase. For example, Visa, Mastercard, American Express. In payments lingo: "credit card association". Back to something vaguely relevant, one way you can instantly detect these scams is that they always seem to claim they're from Visa or Mastercard, then try to talk about lowering your interest rate. Your interest rate is between you (the customer) and your issuing bank (Citi, Capital One, etc.), not between you and the card association. Visa or Mastercard doesn't care about your interest rate. The scammers are not even claiming to be from the right type of organization! I assume they do this because they get a higher hit rate. If they claimed to be from, say, Chase, then lots of people would think "I don't have an account with them" and hang up. If they say Visa or Mastercard, odds are good that you'll think "yes, I have one of those". |
https://www.vantiv.com/credit-card-processing/what-is