- 47 -
with a particular financial institution's (here Norwest's) product;
following recognition of Norwest as the appropriate financial
institution, Visa sends a communication to Norwest seeking
authorization of the transaction; Norwest then verifies that the
card holder has sufficient funds in his or her account to make the
purchase, authorizes the transaction, and finally debits the
holder's account.
Once Norwest decided to enter the debit card market in 1989,27
NTS was under pressure to complete the project by yearend so that
Norwest could market the product before its competitors. At the
time Norwest entered the debit card market, there were two
approaches to issuing the card. The first approach was through a
credit card processing system by which a third party handled all of
the transactions in a credit-card-like fashion and then sent the
transactions to the card issuer (Norwest) for payment and debit.28
26(...continued)
account authentication and transaction authorization.
27 Typically, projects were identified in the year prior
to the time Norwest's business units wanted the projects
completed. However, in the case of the debit card software
project, the decision to enter the debit card market was not made
until early 1989, and the goal was to complete the project by the
end of that same year.
28 Under this approach, two messages are sent from the
merchant: One seeking authorization and one seeking settlement.
However, settlement is performed by the credit card processing
company in an off-line batch job (which is usually done at
(continued...)
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