U.S. Payment Card & Mobile Payment Providers & Retailers Cybersecurity

American Express, Discover, MasterCard, Visa consumer and other commercial credit, debit, and prepaid cards issued in the U.S. combined to generate $4.077 trillion in spending at merchants in 2013, up 7.9% from 2012, according to the annual report on U.S. General Purpose Credit Cards, published by the Nilson Report. Some statistics on Payment Card usage in the U.S. are as follows:

• Average number of credit cards held by cardholders: 3.7
• For every consumer 18 years or older, there are. 1.3 general-purpose credit cards in force and 0.7 card that was active (used at least once a month). For each business, there is 1 general-purpose Payment Card in force and 0.6 cards active.
• Percentage of consumers who have at least one Payment Card was 72.2%, compared with 77% who had at least one debit card and 32.3% with at least one prepaid card.
• Payment Card Of the 3.7 credit cards held by the average card holder: two cards earned rewards and 1.8 cards did not. (These numbers do not sum exactly to due to rounding error.)
• As of August 2014, 3-4% of payment cards issued in the U.S. had a Chip and PIN security smartcard. The rest are magnetic stripe based cards.

The layers of the Payment Card industry consist of the following three industries:

1. Acquirer: A merchant acquirer handles the merchant’s customers’ card authorizations, makes sure the money ends up in the correct account, sends a statement every month, and serves as intermediary should a customer have a dispute with a charge.
2. Issuer: The issuer is a financial institution that provides branded cards or other branded payment products to consumers and businesses.
3. Processor: Processing a Payment Card transaction involves two stages: authorization, where an electronic request is sent through various parties to either approve or decline the transaction; and clearing and settlement, where all parties settle their accounts and get paid.

U.S. 45 Top Payment Card Acquirers: Links, Territory of Operation & Contact Info.

U.S. 22 Top Payment Card & 22 Top Debit Cards Issuers Data

More information can be found at: U.S. Financial Services: Cybersecurity Systems & Services Market ““ 2016-2020