Norwest Corporation and Subsidiaries - Page 72

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          was sure of neither the reasons nor the solutions.  The process of          
          improving the Trust Payment system required code review, the                
          rewriting of several Trust Payment system functions, and then               
          testing the system to observe the processing time. If the                   
          improvements were not satisfactory, NTS went  on  to  other                 
          approaches.  Throughout this process, NTS received assistance from          
          IBM.                                                                        
               Although developed for in-house use by Norwest, the Trust              
          Payment system was examined by two other companies interested in            
          purchasing the system.                                                      
               H.  Debit Card                                                         
               The Debit Card software system was built to support the                
          issuance of Norwest's debit card product.  A debit card is a                
          financial product that permits payment of point-of-sale purchases           
          directly from the card holder's checking (or other) account.25   To         
          accomplish payment, a number of transactions occur, as follows:             
          Upon presentation of the debit card to a merchant, the transaction          
          is sent to a card association network processor (in this case               
          Visa);26 Visa then seeks to identify the transaction as being made          


               25   This is as opposed to a credit card system in which the           
          card holder makes purchases against a preestablished line of                
          credit.                                                                     
               26   The card processor, in addition to routing transaction            
          requests to the issuing bank, also performs card holder and                 
                                                             (continued...)           





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