Card Network

When you pay by card, the card network routes the transaction between the merchant's bank and your card issuer, checks that the payment is approved and enables the money to move between banks.

The largest global card networks are Visa and Mastercard, which do not issue cards themselves but provide the network that banks use. Other networks, such as American Express and Discover, often both run the network and issue cards directly to customers. Some countries have national networks, such as UnionPay in China, RuPay in India and others.

For example, a bank in one country issues a Visa debit card to a customer. When that customer pays at a restaurant abroad, the Visa network connects the restaurant's bank with the customer's bank so that the payment can be approved within seconds.

Card networks earn fees on transactions, set interchange fee levels within limits set by regulators, and establish security standards, such as chip and contactless technology. Their scale and importance have made them the focus of competition and regulatory scrutiny in several countries.