Gold card s often have a wide range of benefits such as priority bookings with airlines and travel insurance. Purchasing Cards Purchasing cards are issued to companies to enable them to pay for company goods, such as stationery and office supplies up to an agreed buying limit. These cards enable them to save on costs created by raising invoices and cheques. Last year a consortium of Visa bank issuers started providing purchasing cards to British government departments. Store Cards Store cards are issued by retailers and are accepted only by the individual company, such as a department store, retail chain or petrol station which issues them.
All transactions are between the issuer and cardholder only.
You can use store cards to make payments and to obtain credit, but not to obtain cash. Chip cards and electronic purse Chip cards , also known as smart card s, are the next generation of plastic payment cards. By the end of the year 2000, it is expected that half of all credit and debit cards in the UK will operate with a microprocessor chip. This means that the information currently held by cards on the magnetic stripe will also be contained in a small microchip embedded in the plastic. Chip cards, or Integrated Circuit Cards to give them their proper name, will be more secure and more powerful than existing cards because the computer chip they use can hold at least 80 times more information than the magnetic stripe.