Credit Card Security and Privacy - Assignment Example

It is possible today to find people having credit cards in their wallets; these credit cards have become vital in purchasing airline tickets, shopping online, buying products in a grocery, and topping off the gas tank (Arnold, 2008). In all these activities, the presence of credit cards can be seen to have made life easy for many people who would have found it rather difficult to buy and sell if a credit card was not available. Therefore, credit cards can be said to be convenient and quick in terms of completing business transactions.

Many people carry with them at least one thin plastic card in their wallets or pockets, and this thin plastic card is used to pay for products and services at different merchants. For close to half a century, credit cards have become popular in different parts of the world. Many people today are not willing to carry hard cash; instead are more interested in carrying plastic money in form of credit cards. These credit cards just like hard cash can be used to acquire products and services from different merchants. Credit cards have two main functions, which are to act as a medium of borrowing and also act as an alternate transaction medium. For the former, the use of credit cards is related to the number of ATMs. As a result, the wide usage of credit cards in any given society has led to negative or reduced demand for money. The reason for this is that people have shifted all types of their demand for money in terms of transactions to credit cards (Hardekopf, Oldshue, & Oldshue, 2008). Besides, when credit cards act as an alternate transaction medium, they lead to a majority of individuals and organizations holding fewer money balances in their hands.

Besides the major credit cards, there have been instances when particular credit cards like Discover credit cards have not been accepted (Dolen, 2011). As a result, it is possible to find out that in some cases, a credit card may not be accepted in some locations in Australia. The trend of not accepting certain credit cards has largely been prevalent among small business entities such as retailers (Dolen, 2011). Therefore, it is always advisable to check beforehand, whether a certain type of credit card is allowed in a particular transaction or not. Furthermore, charges for credit cards across Australia vary among different merchants and this again requires those using credit cards to carry out a thorough survey to find the appropriate locations or business entities that have friendly rates for the usage of credit cards.