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Payment card

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Payment card

Payment cards are part of a payment system issued by financial institutions, such as a bank, to a customer that enables its owner (the cardholder) to access the funds in the customer's designated bank accounts, or through a credit account and make payments by electronic transfer with a payment terminal and access automated teller machines (ATMs). Such cards are known by a variety of names, including bank cards, ATM cards, client cards, key cards or cash cards.

There are a number of types of payment cards, the most common being credit cards, debit cards, charge cards, and prepaid cards. Most commonly, a payment card is electronically linked to an account or accounts belonging to the cardholder. These accounts may be deposit accounts or loan or credit accounts, and the card is a means of authenticating the cardholder. However, stored-value cards store money on the card itself and are not necessarily linked to an account at a financial institution. The largest global card payment organizations are: UnionPay, Visa, Mastercard and American Express.

It can also be a smart card that contains a unique card number and some security information such as an expiration date or with a magnetic strip on the back enabling various machines to read and access information. Depending on the issuing bank and the preferences of the client, this may allow the card to be used as an ATM card, enabling transactions at automatic teller machines; or as a debit card, linked to the client's bank account and able to be used for making purchases at the point of sale; or as a credit card attached to a revolving credit line supplied by the bank. In 2017, there were 20.48 billion payment cards (mainly prepaid cards) in the world.

Historically, bank cards have also served the purpose of a cheque guarantee card, a now almost defunct system to guarantee cheques at point of sale.

The first bank cards were automated teller machine (ATM) cards issued by Barclays in London in 1967, and by Chemical Bank in Long Island, New York, in 1969. In 1972, Lloyds Bank issued the first bank card to feature an information-encoding magnetic strip, using a personal identification number (PIN) for security.

The smart card, which was introduced in the 1970s, was adapted for use as a payment card. Smart payment cards were introduced to the banking sector in 1979, and came into wider use in the mid-1980s.

In some banking networks, the two functions of ATM cards and debit cards are combined into a single card, simply called a "debit card" or also commonly a "bank card". These are able to perform banking tasks at ATMs and also make point-of-sale transactions, with both features using a PIN.

Canada's Interac and Europe's Debit Mastercard are examples of networks that link bank accounts with point-of-sale equipment.

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