"Pick Up Card"

Since the beginning of CNP (Card Not Present) payments, this response coming back from the Issuer has always provided both confusion and entertainment. For those new to the anomalies of processing a credit card, seeing a message like this can be very frustrating. Once you have been around awhile you realize this is just another little indicator that for the most part the underlying credit card processing systems are all geared toward face-to-face Card Present transactions. While CNP overall which includes MOTO (Mail Order Telephone Order) and eCommerce now represents something like ~15% of total credit card sales, if you recall back at the dawn of ecommerce and listened to the pundits, by now all shopping would be done online. Well, like with most things, it is evolution, not revolution. Ecommerce faired better in 2008 than retail, but was not immune from the crisis and while this channel will continue to take more and more share, for a very long time to come the majority of transactions will continue to be done face-to-face. p.s. Once they figure out how to "transport" your meal through the Internet, I guess the % would rise exponentially since restaurant spending on credit cards is such a significant % of the total!!!