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Through the years there have been advancements made in everything that we use. The advancements made in credit card processing machines have been astronomical. You can now use this type of transaction payment easier, safer, and at more places. The credit card processing machines of the past were generally located in gas stations and in some retail stores. Not all merchants accepted the payments made on credit accounts, and debit accounts were unheard of at the time. The first credit card processing machines were manually operated devices. The device had a place for the merchant to put a transaction slip into, and on top of that transaction slip the merchant would place the card the purchases were being charged to. There was a lever on the side of the machine that allowed the merchant to slide a bar over the top of the card causing the card to be pressed firmly against the transaction slip. The information on the card would be left imprinted on the transaction slip. The customer would then sign the transaction slip and one copy would be given to the customer while another copy was retained for the store. As time went by the credit card processing machines were made electronic. The electronic machines still had the transaction slips that fit into them, and they still required the merchant to slide a lever across the card to leave an imprint on the slip, but the newer models had keypads so the merchant could transmit the sale in progress to the financial institution. This transmission allowed the merchant to discover when cards were no longer good to be used. Technology kept advancing and the devices used to transmit the details of a purchase from the point of sale to the financial institution that issued the account steadily improved as well. The days of paper transaction slips are long gone and today the cardholder simply places their piece of plastic into the designated area on the device and pulls downward in a swift motion. The device is designed to read the information embedded on the card and automatically connect the point of sale machine with the financial institution that holds the account. All of this takes place in a minute or less. The old machines did not require that the customer have a private pin number to safeguard their account information. With the old machines a signature on the transaction slip was all that was required, and it could take the merchant several weeks to discover if the card was used fraudulently at their establishment. Today the merchant is alerted to a fraudulent sale immediately and there is no question of whether the financial institution is going to pay the charges. The advancements in these points of sale devices has improved the security for the people who use the cards. Since more and more people are replacing checks and cash with these cards the security of the accounts is very important. Credit card processing machines were once manual devices that required paper transaction slips. The credit card processing machines that were first developed had no keypads so no pin numbers were required to verify identity. For more information you can visit Transax Merchant Services.
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