Mastercard credit cards are a uniform shape and size. Their dimensions are governed by the ISO 7810 standard, an international standard for identification cards.
Some instant approval credit cards are mastercard credit cards, notably ANZ Low Rate.
Mastercard is accepted at almost 29 million locations around the world. MasterCard is the second largest credit card network in the world and was originally formed by a number of Californian banks including Crocker National Bank in response to the Bank of America card which of course later became the VISA credit card.
The Bank of America was based in San Francisco and almost all its branches were in California. The predecessor of MasterCard set itself up as a co-operative of a number of Californian banks. They realised that on their own they could not form a rival to the Bank of America Card, but that by offering their card together they could become a real force in consumer finance and of course history has shown that they were right.
It was the co-operative banks of Mastercard who separated the account management from the processing of the card, that is; the banks extended the credit, charged the interest and calculated which accounts were due alomg with minimum repayments. This was an important step in the history of credit cards and is the model that Bank of America later followed when its card became known as VISA.
MasterCard like VISA operates a zero liability guarantee. What this means is that MasterCard will not charge the credit card consumer for any unauthorised transactions that are made on a card that is processed by MasterCard where the consumer was not at fault.
MasterCard for most of its life was a co-operative owned equally by the banks that issued the cards under its name. In 2006 it became a profit making company and floated on the New York Stock Exchange again leading the way for VISA to follow.
MasterCard offers both credit and debit cards in the Australian market, it does not issue its own cards but its cards are issued through the banks and other financial institutions who are the companies that both manage the accounts and advance the money. Its cards are accepted throughout the world and while MasterCard will pay for any transactions in the local currency, it will bill the card holder in their own currency, for example Australian dollars.
In 1984, MasterCard was the first to use a hologram on its cards to deter fraud.
