Is there a discover bank in Oklahoma?

Credit Card Processing: What would need to be done to become an additional payment type? To become another visa, mastercard, discover and amex and be able to route authorizations to an issuing bank?

• Lets simplify the scenario by saying that one will only need to authorize transactions against a single issuing bank. So, what needs to be done to the POS systems or upstream transaction switches? What kind of functionality would the issuing bank need to provide to enable authorizations against accounts which reside in that bank?

• Answer:

  To keep the answer simplified... To become a payment type, and assuming you have launched your own swipe card for this purpose, what you would need essentially is something called a CTL software (Credit Tenants Lease), software, that is used by the acquiring bank for purposes merchant and card management. Your POS and other channels (say Internet), etc. would need to route transaction to the acquiring software and then approve the transaction. The concept in itself is not overly complex, the software allows you to add and open as many channels for acquiring as you wish. Visa, Mastercard, et. al. are the more establish channels with detailed guidelines for interconnect and certification. You, for your new payment type would need to do the same. Such tasks other than connectivity, would mean, merchant acquisition and sign-up, risk and fraud management, merchant accounting, etc. The CTL software would then talk to your Core Banking and/or the Core Banking of other banks via a payment gateway switch or an ATM switch. Conceptually designing an additional payment system is not that difficult, they are mostly used in specific geographic localities as native payment systems. Its all about getting traction. The more merchants you signup, the more customers will see a reason to use the card and sign-up with you. Needless to say, you will have to compete on price (its all about pricing at the end of the day). To answer the last line of your question, banks, simply need to have some middleware (like the CTL) software, route a transaction for debit/credit to the core banking software.