Many cardholders encounter transaction failures when swiping their credit cards on POS machines. There are many reasons for this. For example, one is caused by downgrade transactions. Generally, the POS machine will prompt "Downgrade transactions are not supported." ". Since many cardholders don’t know what a credit card downgrade transaction means, today Xicaijun will briefly introduce it to you.

Credit card downgrade transaction is actually related to the type of credit card.

We all know that credit cards are currently divided into three types: magnetic stripe cards, chip cards, and magnetic stripe chip composite cards. While magnetic stripe cards can be swiped directly, chip cards use a chip as a medium and can only be inserted into the card for transactions. The magnetic stripe-chip composite card not only has a magnetic stripe but also a chip, so it can support both card swiping and card insertion transactions.

However, because the security level of chip cards is higher than that of magnetic stripe cards, when using a magnetic stripe chip composite card to initiate a transaction by reading the magnetic stripe on a terminal with chip acceptance function, the security level is reduced. , so it is called a downgrade transaction, but it could have been a high-level chip card transaction.

However, currently according to the relevant requirements of the "Notice of the General Office of the People's Bank of China on Matters Concerning the Gradual Closing of Financial IC Card Downgrade Transactions" (Yinbanfa [2014] No. 107), in order to give full play to financial IC cards Security advantage: Many banks have closed downgrade transactions for chip-magstripe dual-media composite credit cards, so you can no longer use chip cards to swipe magstripe transactions, otherwise it will prompt "downgrade transactions are not supported."

The above is the relevant introduction to "What is the meaning of credit card downgrade transaction", I hope it will be helpful to everyone. Generally speaking, if a credit card with a chip is traded through a magnetic stripe, this is a downgraded transaction because the security level is lowered.