Switch Cards Solo Cards Electron JCB Delta Cards

The difference between solo and switch is that switch cards with Nat-West bank
come with cheque guarantee limits. Also with a switch card the money doesn't
debit your account straight away, whereas with a solo you need the money in
the account otherwise the transaction is declined. Also switch is accepted
more widely, solo tends to be given to new account holders, and people under 18.

With Switch a card effectively has a 'limit' and for transactions below this limit
it does not need full verification which can result in you going into the red or over
your overdraft limit. JCB, Delta & Maestro cards are also popular.

Under 18s are not liable for debt (with a number of minor exceptions possibly)
and therefore banks will give the solo card as it cannot allow debt to occur.

The disadvantage of solo is that if there is a glitch in the system then switch
could still go through but solo would be rejected - some times the retailer can
call their clearing merchants (like streamline) who can gain authorisation but
the likes of supermarkets don’t want 1/2 their cashiers having to go off and
make a 10 minute call each time someone wants to pay by solo.

Visa Electron is a debit or credit card available across most of the world, with
the exception of Ireland, Canada, Australia, and the United States. The card
was introduced by VISA in the 1980s and is a sister card to the Visa Debit card.
The difference between Visa Electron and Visa Debit is that payments with Visa
Electron require that all the funds be available at the time of the transfer, i.e. Visa
Electron card accounts cannot be overdrawn. As a comparison, Visa Debit cards
allow transfers of unavailable funds below a certain limit. As a result, some online
stores and all offline terminals (e.g. onboard trains or planes) do not support Visa
Electron because their systems cannot check for the availability of funds.

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